The Empty House
by DezoPenguin
Summary: EMDN Story 6. Six months after the conclusion of "The Final Problem," Natsuki is still trying to cope with the shocking events of that incident. However, the past will come back to her once again when a new case brings back an old face...
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Welcome back, everyone! This will be the conclusion of my "Elementary, My Dear Natsuki" braided novel. I don't necessarily rule out me returning to this Alternate Universe sometime again in the future; I had quite a lot of fun with it, indeed. But it was also an exhausting trip, to say the least, so I feel very happy that I've been able to work through to this point. I hope that this, the final story, will be able to tie up some remaining loose ends and bring everything to a satisfactory conclusion...since, y'know, that's what conclusions are supposed to do: conclude! ^_- Seriously, though, let us return to 1899 and to Shizuru and Natsuki!_

~X X X~

**Cutting from the _Daily Telegraph_**

**kept by Natsuki Kuga**

Murderer Brought to Justice is Detective's Swan Song!

May XX, 1899: Chief Inspector Reito Kanzaki today announced his resignation from the Metropolitan Police in the wake of the shooting of suspected murderer Charles Hartwell two weeks ago. Hartwell, it will be remembered, was the private secretary of the late Mr. Robert Merridew of Kensington and the chief suspect in the murders of Mr. Merridew and of Baron Theophile Maupertuis. It is alleged that Mr. Hartwell sought revenge on the two gentlemen of finance over the notorious affair of the Netherland-Sumatra Company, whose collapse is still being debated even today. Mr. Hartwell is believed to have inveigled his way into a position where he would have access to Mr. Merridew's private papers, and to have committed his crimes based on certain discoveries he had made or believed he had made within them.

Unfortunately, it will now be impossible to determine if this new material sheds light on the Netherland-Sumatra Company's collapse or was merely the delusion of a revenge-obsessed fanatic. Such discoveries as might have been expected to be revealed at the trial were forever lost when, upon being presented with an arrest warrant, Mr. Hartwell chose gunplay rather than submit to the police's lawful authority and was fatally shot.

The coroner's inquest cleared Chief Inspector Kanzaki of any criminal responsibility in the affair, finding that he had acted with no alternative in defense of his life and the lives of others. Nonetheless, the aftermath of this violent confrontation has cost the people of London one of its most astute and celebrated police minds, as although the Chief Inspector did not specifically cite the case in offering his retirement from the Force it is unlikely that such a disturbing incident would not have played a part. Thus once again the deplorable increase in violent criminality that seems to have infected our society as the turn of the century approaches...

~X X X~

At some point in their childhood, I think that every little girl wants to be a fairy-tale princess. It's not the castle and the jewelry and the fancy clothes, although those might seem pretty nice to dream about. And it isn't being rescued by the prince, because it doesn't take too long to figure out that it would be better to pick up a sword or pistol and kill one's own pirates or slay one's own dragons—or at least to have the brains not to take poisoned apples from strange old ladies and so not have to _be_ rescued in the first place.

No, the thing that's appealing about being a princess isn't the job itself at all. It's the fact that the princess is wanted and desired—by the prince, by the people (or else the wicked stepmother wouldn't be jealous), even by the damn dragon who wants her for a snack and the witch who demanded the right to carry her off on her sixteenth birthday. It's heady stuff, particularly when you're young and lonely or at least a little insecure.

I'd had my own princess dreams, I admit. Especially after my mother died and my father left me in the care of strangers, generous with his purse but not his time. And yeah, I even dreamed of a heroic prince on a white horse who'd ride in and fix all the problems in my life. When I got a little older, though, I set all that aside. Dreams of love, dreams of being desired and cherished, were replaced by another dream, a dream that fed on the loneliness instead of offering relief from it.

Revenge.

I gave myself utterly over to it. Instead of ladylike arts, I learned how to shoot a revolver, to pick a lock, and to take apart a man twice my size with my bare hands. Instead of meeting eligible bachelors at society parties, I met shady underworld contacts in cheap bars and dark alleys. I had no time for fairy tales. That was probably why it took me so long to realize that I'd fallen into one anyway.

That was it, all right. I, Natsuki Kuga, had become a princess. Or at least the object of desire for a witch. She'd crept into my life, dazzling me with her fairy glamour, enfolding me in her mysterious world while she concealed her true feelings, until I'd all but been ensnared.

Then, she went and used her witchcraft to offer me my heart's desire. She laid the bodies of my mother's killers at my feet, three men and a woman slain as a love-offering, and the illusion I'd lived in was forever shattered. I'd been terrified, by the reality of my hopes made real, by the revelation of her feelings, by the sudden shift in my world necessary to even believe such things were possible—but above all, by the realization that _I_ was the object of feelings so overwhelming and intense that they could make the best and wisest woman I'd ever known throw away her ideals, her kindness.

I'd pushed her away in my fear, thrust her from me in a rejection nearly as cruel as anything she'd done. I'd thought I understood life, the people around me, but I was really like someone who lived in a tiny room hedged round with mirrors, who sees nothing but reflections of herself. But now the mirrors were shattered, my past life destroyed, and I was left alone to face the reality that lay beyond them.

And what, exactly, was left to me?

The driving passion of my life, the need to avenge my mother's murder that had plagued me since I was five, was gone. The ones who'd pointed their fingers and decreed "Saeko Kuga must die" were all themselves dead, and the organization itself that had used her, then disposed of her was nothing but ashes, its leadership and records forever gone in the fire that had consumed a certain home in St. John's Wood. The best friend I'd ever had, the woman who'd given me the closest human connection I'd felt in those long, lonely years, had rushed into those same flames when I'd pushed her away, and everything we'd had, everything we might have become was forever gone with them.

It was only now, when it was all over, with no hope of them being restored, that I truly realized how much I'd treasured those enchanted days. How much our Baker Street rooms had become, not just the place where I ate and slept, but a _home_. How much it had made me happy to come back from an errand, open the door, and find her there sipping green tea or sprawled lazily on the couch. How without her the rooms had turned cold and hollow.

How damned much I missed her.

"Shizuru..."

This was going to be a bad day, I realized. There had been a lot of them, these past six months, as I tried to cope with the ruins of my life. I'd spent much of the first three weeks trying to crawl into a bottle, something I'd been lucky to have been stopped at doing before I became _unable_ to stop. But the feelings that had pushed me that way still remained. Some days—most days, lately—they were cicatrized over, like an old wound that hurt but only when you moved in a certain way. Other times, though, they came on their own without any reminder, and in so doing threatened to drown me.

A knock on the door jolted me. I'd been so lost I'd hadn't even heard the footsteps on the stairs.

"Yeah? Who's there?"

The door opened and our—_my!—_landlady marched in. Mrs. Moira Hudson was a brash, red-haired Scotswoman with a fiery disposition to match. I had no idea what her age was; she could have been twenty-five or forty-five or anywhere in between. It didn't really matter, anyway; she was one of those women who'd be a seventeen-year-old girl forever, even if she lived to be a hundred.

"You look bad, Natsuki."

"Thanks so much," I growled.

"All that time with Shizuru, I figured that I was as long-suffering as a landlady could get. Noises at odd hours. Callers when decent people ought to be in bed. Experiments in chemistry and stranger matters. And let's not mention the time arsonists tried to burn down the building—though come to think of it, that one was your fault, wasn't it? Anyway, the point is that at least your Shizuru's habits were only irritating, whereas you...I _worry_ about you, Natsuki."

I blinked at her.

"She's not 'my' Shizuru," I sighed.

"She was then."

I sighed. "Yeah, I suppose that's true." Mrs. Hudson knew most of the story. She'd been the one to open up a bottle of Scotch the night I'd come back shattered and alone, without Shizuru, and sat down with me until morning. She'd also been the one to take the bottle _out_ of my hand three weeks later when it had become clear I was at risk of losing myself to it. "You shouldn't worry about me, though."

"I can't help it. Stray cats, lost sheep, melancholic lodgers, it's just a weakness."

"Do I look like a sheep?" I demanded.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Runaway puppy," she decided. "Caught out in the rain."

I tried to be annoyed with her, but there wasn't enough anger in me to pull it off and I gave up, chuckling.

"Is there any chance of getting any coffee this morning along with the advice?"

"Of course. But what I actually came to tell you is that you have callers."

As if on cue, I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs and voices from the landing.

"But, Lady Haruka, we still haven't been asked to come up."

"We don't have time to sit around waiting all day." A second later, the door was flung open. "Well, Kuga, are you awake yet?"

Inspector Lady Haruka Armitage swept into the room like a force of nature. Dressed in her customary shades of green and cream, her honey-blonde hair ruthlessly pulled off her forehead, she stormed towards me. She'd have made an almost comic figure, with her whirlwind manner and her malapropisms, were it not for the fact that she had one of Scotland Yard's best deductive minds and a genuine dedication to law and justice. The fact that she was the Metropolitan Police's only female detective officer spoke for itself so far as her strength of will went.

As always, Yukino Chrysant traveled in Armitage's shadow, a slender, freckled brunette with short, tousled hair and spectacles. She basically worshipped the ground that Armitage walked on, but had a sharp eye for detail that made her a valuable assistant rather than just a lady-companion kept around for propriety's sake.

I rubbed my temples. Haruka Armitage before my morning coffee was much more than I was prepared to deal with.

"What is it, Inspector?"

"The Adair murder case! Don't you read your own paper?" She pointed to the folded _Telegraph_, which Mrs. Hudson had set on the coffee table.

"Not since you got here. Mrs. Hudson only brought it up just now when she came to announce you. Speaking of which, don't you upper-crust types generally wait politely to be received?"

Armitage snorted.

"This is murder. Besides, Kuga, since when do you Bohemian writer types stand on ceremony?"

"When we're sitting around in our dressing gown," I said, waving a hand at my less-than-formal morning attire.

"Isn't that Viola's dressing-gown?" Armitage had the bad grace to ask. I had the sudden urge to ask her how she knew what Shizuru's dressing-gown looked like before good sense reminded me that Shizuru had received any number of clients while she was still in her dressing-gown, once including the Home Secretary.

"Mine ripped three months ago and it was easier to just use the one she left behind," I snapped in an admittedly lame justification. Chrysant gave me a look over Armitage's shoulder that surprised me: sympathy, maybe? Or an attempt at commiseration? I think she may have meant it kindly, but the realization that someone understood me so easily still stung.

Yes, it was going to be a bad day.

Then again, in that case, I had might as well go with Armitage. After all, on a day like today there would be no point in avoiding reminders of Shizuru because I couldn't get her out of my head anyway.

The reason Armitage was here at all was that since midsummer I'd been taking tentative steps towards a new career as an inquiry agent. It was a profession that I was genuinely well-suited for given my personal skills and contacts. I wasn't Shizuru, obviously, but I'd had several months' worth of close observation to learn her methods, and I had practiced them with, if not crushing success, at least not equally crushing failure. If I lacked her brilliance, I at least could let her fundamental principles keep me from making the kind of fatal blunders that afflicted so many members of the official force. This was especially valuable because with Shizuru's absence I had lost my source of writing material; after running through a couple of her cases that were suitable for being disguised and adapted, I'd nothing left to rely on but my own imagination. The mystery and magic seemed to have gone out of my life along with her. By taking on cases of my own I'd hoped to recapture at least some of what had gone.

That part of my idea hadn't completely worked out. In fact, the best story idea I encountered related to the disappearance of a special train that neither I nor anyone else was able to solve. It made a good tale, but was hardly an example of good detective work. I'd had better successes in the conventional business of an inquiry agent, to which my skills were well-adapted, but there was little of the romantic or grotesque in such business, none of the imagination that had seemed inherent in Shizuru's cases.

No witchcraft.

Even so, I had been able, by luck as much as anything, to once put Armitage on the right track when she'd reached a dead stop, and she was willing to consult me in situations similar to when she'd have called on Shizuru. In my case it was with the _hope_ that I'd be able to shed some light on the matter rather than the _expectation_, but that was only fair. And for all that I didn't care for her sometimes-abrasive manner and assumption of authority, I was honestly grateful for her presence now. Right then she represented an escape from these four walls and a chance to focus my mind on some real-world problem instead of indulging in melancholia like a character in one of the Gothics Shizuru had liked to tease me about reading.

_Damn_. Couldn't I even get through one thought today without cycling back around to her?

"In any case, you're right. Mrs. Hudson, could you put on some coffee if you haven't already, and I'll change while that's being prepared. Once I've had a cup I'll be at your disposal, Inspector. Did you or Miss Chrysant want some refreshment?"

Armitage looked like she was going to take offense at the very idea of needing refreshment while there was work to be done, but Chrysant completely derailed whatever she might otherwise have said.

"Um, thank you, it's a bit cold this morning and a cup of coffee would help keep the chill out."

"Nothing for me, thank you, but if you wouldn't mind bringing a cup for Yukino, Mrs. Hudson?" Armitage ended up saying graciously.

"It's no trouble; it won't take but a minute."

I ducked into the bedroom and changed my clothes rapidly, putting on trousers, a white shirt and collar, dark waistcoat, and white cravat, casually knotted. I didn't dress this way quite so often these past months as I once had; I considered masculine-styled wear to be "work clothing" and with the end of the Obsidian Court there had come a clear line between when I was working and when I was not. I slipped a derringer into my waistcoat pocket, clipped to the other end of my watch-chain, and a knife into my boot-top. A decade's habits weren't easily undone, and I still got a very unpleasant itch between my shoulder blades when I went out and about unarmed.

Mrs. Hudson had already brought up the coffee pot and two cups when I came out. Chrysant had added cream and sugar to her cup and was sipping daintily, cradling it between her hands. I poured for myself, sipped once to test how hot it was, then gulped half the cup, sighing as I swallowed. Whomever had discovered coffee ought to be up for sainthood, I decided. Armitage seethed with barely-suppressed impatience while we finished drinking, and I toyed mentally with the idea of having a second cup just to see what her reaction would be. Shizuru would have quite possibly done that with her tea, but if she did she'd have rewarded Armitage at the end for suffering her little game by giving some deduction or other as a kind of quid pro quo for the entertainment value. I didn't have any particular insights to offer, so I'd just be being an ass if I were to yank Armitage's chain.

"All right," I said, setting the empty cup into its saucer with a clink and rising from my chair. "That should help me function something like a human being."

"You should not be so dependent on celebrants, Kuga," Armitage didn't seem aware that I'd decided to play nice.

"It's 'stimulants,' Lady Haruka," Chrysant provided. I wondered sometimes why she bothered with her corrections, since the Inspector's malapropisms didn't seem to have anything to do with a lack of understanding. It was more as if every so often something misfired in her brain and produced the wrong word. Yet, Chrysant's echo was inevitable, part of their routine together, like Shizuru teasing me about when I—

I was wrong. It wasn't going to be a bad day. It was going to be an _awful_ day.

"Let's just get going, all right?" I snapped, to cover how badly I'd been rocked. "I mean, you don't want to waste time telling me how much time _I'm_ wasting, do you?"

She looked at me in kind of cross-eyed fashion, my remark seeming to knock her off-kilter.

"Except that you don't smile, that sounded like something Viola would say," she accused, getting her revenge for my jab without even realizing it. I barely suppressed a wince, and Chrysant gave me another sympathetic look as I walked past her to the door. That surprised me, that she'd catch on so quickly that something was off with me.

The thought came to me out of the blue that maybe the reason she noticed was because she sympathized, recognized or thought she recognized something in me that she understood.

_Does that mean that she—? That she has feelings for Armitage?_ She was certainly devoted to her mistress, but was there more to it?

I dismissed the thought, not out of disbelief but from lack of concern. Yukino Chrysant's love life didn't particularly interest me, and it wasn't any of my damn business either. Just like _my_ problems were none of _hers_, I added, a bit spitefully.

We descended to the street, where Armitage had kept her carriage waiting. Very few Scotland Yarders had private transportation, but Lady Haruka's family had massive industrial wealth on her mother's side to match the agricultural holdings of her father, the Marquis of Penford. Her carriage was well-sprung and had a first-class driver and team for when speed was essential.

"All right," I said when seated inside and we were underway, "what's this case that I should have heard about from this morning's paper?"

"It was in the Stop Press in all the papers, so I'd have thought it was all over the city by now. The murder of the Honorable Ronald Adair."

I blinked at her.

"_That_ Adair?"

She nodded.

"I'm not surprised you've heard of him," she said. "He was quite a well-known figure. Second son of the Earl of Maynooth, who is currently governor of one of the Australian provinces. Adair was a well-known clubman and sportsman, a sought-after bachelor until his engagement to Miss Edith Woodley of Carstairs was announced this past Season, although it was broken off by mutual consent in August."

Oh, I'd heard of him all right, but not in that context. I'd actually had face-to-face contact with the man. His last words to me had been, if I recalled correctly, "You interfering whore! I'll see you repaid for this if it's the last thing I do!" I'd managed not to actually laugh in his face at the time, but the petulant, whining tone had made me think more of a sulky toddler than a serious threat to my well-being. And sure enough, here he was, dead, without doing a thing to me.

"In this case, 'mutual consent' being the socially acceptable phrase for 'she refused to marry a sex-obsessed syphilitic,' Inspector?"

Armitage gave a start.

"What? What do you know about it?"

"I'm sure your police surgeon will tell you the same if an autopsy is to be performed."

"Which it is, if for nothing else than to extract the bullet that killed him from his skull." She frowned. "That wasn't easy to get his mother to agree to. There are still so many people who see an autopsy as desecrating the dead. I can name a half-dozen cases where the family's refusal to permit a post-mortem medical examination was the direct cause of a murderer going unpunished because the police didn't have any medical evidence to back up their theory of the crime."

"But you managed to convince her in the end?"

"Lady Haruka was very persuasive. She spoke of an aristocrat's duty to queen and country, and of the urgent need for justice for the dead man, and how while a woman's finer feelings did her credit so too must she find the courage to set them aside for the sake of her son and for justice, even as Lady Haruka herself had done so in order to serve in the police force."

Chrysant was almost starry-eyed as she recited what Armitage had done, while the Inspector herself turned to the window, flustered and embarrassed. I could barely resist making a comment, an opportunity Shizuru absolutely would not have passed up. Even so, I had to respect what Armitage had done; this was why she was so often assigned to cases involving the wealthy and titled, because she was "one of them" and so able to win people's cooperation in situations where others wouldn't be able to—nor, of course, was she the slightest bit intimidated by the presence of the upper crust.

"A-anyway!" she rushed on, "the point is, how do _you_ know that Adair was supposedly discolored, Kuga?"

"It's 'diseased,' Lady Haruka."

"The Woodleys are cautious people. Their daughter was star-struck by the attentions of the Season's most eligible bachelor, but they were aware that they'd be entrusting their only child into the hands of a gentleman they themselves did not know well, and for the rest of her life." Barring a divorce, of course, but that was as scandalous a business as any and could leave her ruined socially if things went too far. A divorce involving a peer's son would be an instant _cause celebre_ in the Press.

"So they came to you."

"They came to me," I confirmed. "I have a feeling that Woodley had heard rumors already, since hiring an inquiry agent to look into the activities and character of one's daughter's fiance is a bit outside the pale. In any case, he was right. So far as I could tell, Adair was more cocksman than clubman." Chrysant blushed at my expression. "Bluntly, he'd tumble anything in skirts he could get close to: actresses, maidservants, ladies of his own class whose virtue wasn't up to their title, to say nothing of regular visits to a number of different brothels catering to a wide variety of tastes. As you might expect, that kind of behavior has consequences; he was already paying to support one illegitimate son and I think, though couldn't confirm, that he had made lump-sum payments in a couple of other cases. He wasn't the worst offender I've known in that area—at least all his liaisons were consensual so far as I could tell—but Miss Edith would be lucky if they got back from the honeymoon before he cheated on her."

"Disgusting," Armitage said flatly.

"Of course, any number of Society marriages are based on the principle that husband and wife see each other as little as possible, so that didn't necessarily settle the matter, but when I learned that he had been secretly undergoing a doctor's treatment it was a very easy guess as to why. I obtained proof, and the Woodleys and Adairs arranged for the engagement to be broken off discreetly so the dirty laundry didn't need to be aired. He blustered a bit, but backed off quickly when I presented him with names, dates, and other details."

Armitage snorted.

"No one with any decency would engage in a liaison, let alone contract a marriage, while suffering from a venereal disease."

I couldn't argue that point.

"He struck me as a pampered child in the body of a man, unable to understand that he couldn't just have whatever he liked."

"The question is, did someone decide that a tantrum was reason enough to kill him?"

~X X X~

_A/N: Sherlock Holmes fans will immediately recognize Adair as the victim in "The Adventure of the Empty House." The hideous slanders on his character which apply only to _this_ story are, however, entirely my own! The reference to Haruka being the only female detective at Scotland Yard is even more ahead of its time than it appears—there were no female officers of the Metropolitan Police until _1919!_ Oddly enough, in fiction women detectives were well ahead of their time; the first female officers appeared in fiction in the 1860s! The case involving a disappearance of a special train that Natsuki mentions is an allusion to Conan Doyle's non-Sherlock Holmes short story "The Lost Special."_


	2. Chapter 2

427 Park Lane was a stately, elegant building suitable as the Town residence of an earl. Armitage stormed up the front steps and hammered the polished brass knocker with more force than was strictly necessary; I guessed that she was still upset at my story of Adair's offensive behavior. A footman in livery opened the door.

"Lady Haruka," he said at once. Armitage was definitely the kind of person one didn't forget.

"My associates and I need to see the study again," she said, brushing past him. "You may inform Her Ladyship of my panache."

"It's 'presence,' Lady Haruka."

We followed her up a flight of stairs and through halls decorated with understated elegance to a door which had clearly been burst open.

"The Countess wanted to speak to her son concerning his presence at a garden party she'd intended to give next week," Armitage explained. "When was that, Yukino?"

Chrysant flipped through her notepad.

"According to her statement, it was quarter 'till eight."

"She found the door locked, much to her surprise, and when Adair did not answer repeated knocks, she peered through the keyhole. She saw him slumped half out of his chair in an unnatural posture and became concerned. She summoned the butler, and they forced the door open, whereupon they found that Adair had been shot. They summoned the police at once."

"You're ruling out suicide?" I asked. "With the threat of scandal, his future prospects ruined, I could easily see that happening."

"There was no gun in the room and no suicide note."

"You weren't the first person in the room," I pointed out. The Countess might well have wanted to prevent a scandal from touching the family; murder by person or persons unknown would look better for Adair's reputation than the implication that he had something to despair over.

"You suspect that the scene was tidied by the Countess and her servant before I arrived?" Armitage shook her head. "I thought of that, but the wound was to the left rear of his skull"—she tapped her head to indicate the spot—"and showed no traces of scorching or powder burns so it appeared the shot was fired from a distance. I ordered a paraffin test to be performed on the corpse's hands to check for powder residue, just in case, but I doubt it will reveal anything."

"You ordered a paraffin test?" I thought that was kind of surprising. "Were you just being thorough, or did something make you suspicious?"

"A good investigator doesn't substitute her personal precipices for the facts."

"It's 'prejudices,' Lady Haruka," Yukino noted.

"So what facts made you suspect suicide in light of the obvious evidence?" I asked.

"The gunshot. Or rather, the lack of one."

"Eh?"

"Nobody heard a shot. Not the Countess or Lady Hilda, nor any of the servants. That suggests the shot was fired from outside, through the open window. In addition, we found no footprints on the grass outside the window or in the flowerbed or any other marks to indicate that someone had climbed up to the window. But no one else, not the beat constable nor anyone in adjoining houses, heard a shot either. What's more, from the look of the wound, very neat with no exit wound, I'd stake my reputation that it wasn't a rifle bullet, but a revolver bullet that killed him. You're an expert shot, so you should know how difficult it is to snipe someone in the head from a distance at which the household might not hear the shot."

I nodded.

"Next to impossible, I'd think. Even the best marksman can't alter the physical characteristics of the weapon, and the circumstances were hardly ideal for precision shooting."

"That's why I suspected that it was a suicide and that the Countess had simply ordered the servants to remain quiet. Only, the evidence doesn't fit that theory, either."

I was a little bit surprised. One of Armitage's greatest strengths and weaknesses both was that she was like a bulldog, locking her jaws into something and not letting go. But then again, though I rarely got to see it, she did possess that level of tact and diplomacy I'd though about before, and accusing the Countess of covering up her son's suicide when there was evidence she didn't would be rude and insulting even by _my_ standards.

"I see. So you ordered the test for powder residue just to be sure, but you suspect that it wasn't suicide. Where was the key?" I asked.

"In Adair's pocket."

"Hm, so we're dealing with a murderer who thinks carefully about the details, or else Adair had some reason for wanting to be alone, without interruption. So what was he doing? You said he was found in a chair. Did you mean that one?" I pointed to the desk chair, which was padded in rich brown leather for comfort. The entire study had a rich, masculine appearance about it, like the office of a bank president or something, right down to the picture of a ship fighting its way through storm-tossed seas that hung over the mantel.

"That's right."

"So he was here..." I strolled over to look. A piece of cream-colored stationery bearing the Maynooth crest set out on the blotter, the ink-bottle was uncapped, and a pen lay loose from its holder. "Writing a letter?"

"That's what we thought."

"I wish he'd had the chance to begin it; it might afford a clue," I mused. "How long was he in here?"

Chrysant checked her notes.

"The family finished dining at half past seven. According to the Countess, Mr. Adair did not linger, but went directly here after the coffee."

"So a quarter-hour, then." I lightly touched the rim of a cut-glass tumbler sitting on the corner of the desk. "He locked the door, poured himself a drink from the sideboard, came here and sat down, finished the drink, got ready to write whatever it was...and bang! Shot."

Armitage nodded.

"Of course we checked the wastepaper basket, but didn't find a discarded first attempt or the like."

I should have thought of that.

"I..." Chrysant started to say, then fell silent.

"Yes?"

She just shook her head. "It's probably nothing, really."

"Yukino, if you have a thought you should go ahead and say so," Armitage encouraged. "If it's wrong, it's wrong, but it's still worth speaking your mind even then."

She looked a little nervous at that, but she did speak up.

"W-well, I was just wondering, if Mr. Adair wanted to have a drink before he started writing, why did he have it here instead of with his family? Wouldn't that have been more pleasant than to drink it in here, alone?"

Armitage and I glanced at each other.

"She's got a good point," I said.

"Yes; it wasn't a formal dinner of any sort, where the ladies would leave the gentlemen to port and cigars."

I looked over to the sideboard, then back to the desk.

"He didn't just come in here for the whiskey; he came in here and locked the door, then poured his drink," Armitage mused. "He didn't take his drink back out to have with his mother and sister, but he sat down at his desk and had it here."

We were groping towards something that Shizuru, I was sure, would have deduced by now. She'd been a master at deducing motive and intent from small clues of behavior.

"Courage," I deduced.

"What?"

"He came in here. He locked the door. That meant his brain wasn't involved with dinner or family matters. He'd moved on in his mind to whatever he meant to do here. He didn't have his drink _while_ writing, the way I'll drink coffee or something stronger as I work on a story; he drank first, then got out pen and paper. The fact that he locked the door meant that the letter was an important, private matter, right? I figure he had to screw up his courage, steady his nerves before he began it. So he had a finger or two of whiskey, first."

"My son did not require courage from a bottle to face his responsibilities. But then, Miss Kuga, you never did hesitate to cast aspersions at your betters, did you?"

We all turned towards the sound of the arch, aristocratic voice. The Countess of Maynooth was short, no taller than Chrysant, with soft brown hair shot through with silver, an aquiline nose, and high cheekbones. It was not a beautiful face but one that showed strong character. The unrelieved black of her dress showed that she was already in deem mourning; my previous encounters with her had showed her as devoted to her son and obviously that hadn't changed.

Without even giving me time to respond to the insult, she turned to Armitage and lit into her.

"This is a house of mourning, Lady Haruka. While I appreciate the necessity of your disturbing the household in order to carry out your investigations into my son's murder, you had no right to bring this..._person_ through our door. Her very presence is a desecration of my son's memory."

If she'd thought to intimidate Haruka Armitage by her aristocratic manner, she was very mistaken. The daughter of the Marquis of Penford had no inclination to knuckle under to the great the way some low-bred police officials did almost by reflex, so deeply did the class system run. And where Shizuru would have twisted the Countess up in verbal knots with the deftness of a spider spinning a web, Armitage simply unloaded on her like a naval broadside.

"Kuga is here because I requested it, and I most definitely have a right to seek out the evidence I need to solve this case. Particularly when the people who know the victim best are deliberately holding back important information about him!"

The Countess drew herself up sharply.

"How dare you!"

"No, your Ladyship, how dare _you_? Is your son's reputation more important to you than finding his murderer? You'd rather a killer go free than risk Society find out what kind of person Ronald Adair really was?"

"Lies! Calumnies! This _woman_ concocted the entire thing for the sake of gouging a fee from the Woodleys."

It was just possible the Countess actually believed that. Some parents or spouses would deny that a loved one was capable of wrongdoing no matter what the evidence.

"I'd have gotten the same fee if I said Adair was a model of moral character," I snapped.

"Bah! I know how your type functions. Dramatic publicity makes for a reputation. The genius inquiry agent, ferreting out the secret scandals of the aristocracy! And if there's nothing to find, you make something up to justify yourself, and to bring in new clients."

She _had_ been giving this some thought.

"The police surgeon's examination will settle the matter," Armitage wasn't willing to waste time. "What it will not settle is that you deliberately held back significant facts that may relate to the motive for this murder."

"There are no 'facts,' as you put it, Lady Haruka, only the disgusting defamation made by this _person_," Lady Maynooth said archly.

"You mistake my point. I am willing to grant that the allegations might not be true—"

I managed to stifle an offended exclamation. _Diplomacy, Natuski,_ I reminded myself.

"—but that the allegations were _made_ and resulted in the termination of Mr. Adair's engagement is not in doubt. We are looking for a reason why your son was murdered and you painted to me a picture of a man whose life was entirely free of strife and conflict."

"A burglar—" the Countess began lamely.

"Would have burgled. You stated yourself that nothing was missing from the room, and Mr. Adair was found with watch, cuff-links, signet ring, and the money in his pockets all intact. Any cracksman who breaks into a Park Lane residence and coldly guns down an unarmed resident—seated at his desk, mind, not lunging for a weapon on the attack!—would hardly go without helping himself to at least some of the spoils he'd come for." Armitage shook her head. "No, you can dismiss that from your mind. We need to face facts, and the fact is that Mr. Adair is dead because some person intended it that way."

"Then," the Countess responded in an icy voice, "I would suggest that you begin with her."

I snorted.

"I think you have it backwards. If someone found me dead then I can see why the police would take a hard look at your family." Grieving mother or not, I had no intention of putting up with her hypocrisy. "What point would there be in me killing a former subject of an investigation?"

"To save yourself from ruin or prison, you murderous witch!"

It was not the Countess who had replied; this was a new voice, higher, younger, shrill with uncontrolled emotion. Lady Hilda Adair stormed into the study, the sixteen-year-old's petite frame quivering. Her face, ordinarily a younger, softer version of her mother's elegant beauty, was screwed into an expression of hate more like a Greek or Japanese passion-mask than a human visage. She marched towards me, ignoring everyone else in the room.

"My brother was going to destroy you for what you did! He would not rest until he had proven you to be the liar and deceiver that you are! Your tricks would have been exposed, your reputation as an inquiry agent destroyed, the suit for defamation would have crushed you, and if there was truly any justice in the world you would be sent to prison for obtaining money under false pretenses! Only, not satisfied with ruining him to line your pockets, you went on to murder him to save your own neck!"

She finished her fit of pique by whipping her palm towards my face, but I caught her wrist before her slap could connect.

"I understand you're overwrought, but don't expect me to let you strike me just because you don't have the courage to admit your brother was a worthless cad."

The girl gave a shrill, whining growl of rage and helpless frustration, snarling at me almost like an animal. I shoved with the arm that held hers and released my grip, sending her stumbling back a couple of steps. She was about to come at me again when her mother spoke for the first time since Lady Hilda had entered the room.

"Hilda! She is not worth shaming yourself over."

I guessed it was the tone rather than the words that did the trick, but it was done either way; the girl managed to stop herself. She clenched her fists with the effort; her knuckles were white, the nails starting to cut into her palms, and she was literally trembling with rage.

Some people simply could not accept the truth. Lady Hilda had obviously been close to her brother and couldn't bring herself to admit what kind of person he'd been. But as I'd said, that didn't mean I'd let her use me as her scapegoat.

"You know it's the truth! You know what you did!" she hissed at me.

"I'm sure you want to believe that, but your brother could have done nothing but embarrass himself and his family by pressing the point. I'm not chivalrous enough to try and spare you the humiliation."

"Liar! I've seen the letters!"

"Letters?" Armitage put in. "What letters?"

"The ones that prove what she is, what she's done! Ronald was having her investigated."

"This is bloody nonsense," I snapped.

"I want to see those letters," Armitage said. "They could be important evidence as to molar."

"It's 'motive,' Lady Haruka."

Chrysant's correction in the otherwise heated moment served as a sudden tension-breaker, which I certainly appreciated. The idea that Armitage was in any way taking the family's idiotic suggestion seriously bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Then again, she'd be remiss in her duty if she didn't follow up every lead, and once you said "duty" and "Haruka Armitage" in the same breath that was all you really needed to know. She'd accuse Chrysant or her own mother or the Prime Minister if she believed they were guilty. That didn't make it sting less, though—and it definitely didn't do me much good to have my word doubted.

On the other hand, I definitely wanted to see these letters. If someone was accusing me of deliberately falsifying my reports to my clients, I wanted to know who and why. And tie their lying tongue into knots.

"Ronald kept them in a box in his bedroom. I'll get them for you, Lady Haruka."

"Yukino, go with her."

"Yes, Lady Haruka."

"I hardly think that's necessary," the Countess began.

"I think it is. I want Yukino to see what else we might have overlooked last night; I'd intended to make a search of the victim's possessions in any case, and now I'm going to make sure of it."

Lady Hilda and Chrysant were not gone for more than two minutes.

"Here you are, Lady Haruka," the girl declared, thrusting a sheaf of folded papers towards her. "Read them for yourself."

Armitage unfolded the pages and began to glance through them. We all crowded around her, trying to get a glimpse of what they said. She was scowling when she started reading and the expression had only gotten fiercer by the time she was finished.

"Lady Hilda, these letters don't say a thing about Kuga having lied to the Woodleys about your brother, or in fact to anyone about anything. She's mentioned here, but not in anything like the contract you mentioned."

"It's 'context,' Lady Haruka."

"Whatever! The point is, Lady Hilda, did your brother even actually deny Kuga's claims or is that just what you want to believe about him?"

"Of course he denied them! He denied them right to her face!"

"That's true enough," I said. "He kept right on denying it until I confronted him with the evidence. Lady Maynooth was there; she can tell you how the conversation went."

"It was hardly the time or the place for an inquest on your disgusting claims."

"And afterwards?" Armitage prompted.

"Do you truly believe that I would interrogate my own son about such matters? What mother could—"

"There was no _reason_ to ask," Lady Hilda cut in. "We know that Ronald was not capable of such acts, such deceptions."

I rolled my eyes.

"Why call off the marriage, then?"

"Because you'd poisoned the Woodleys' minds against him! Because if we did not agree to a quiet withdrawal of the engagement the girl would have jilted him and her parents put about your lies to justify it!"

"You're delusional," I told her flatly.

"Ronald was a good, decent man and you destroyed him, and now you've killed him!"

"From these letters it sounds rather as if he was the one planning on destroying her," cut in Armitage. "Like this one: 'Keep your courage to the sticking place, Mr. Adair. You told me of how Miss Kuga ruined your future prospects and how dearly you wished to repay her in kind. Our plan is nearly complete; we have but to act and all will be well. Her complete destruction is assured. —M.' That is a plain statement of a criminal conspiracy against Kuga." She turned to me. "Did you suspect anything of this?"

"No, of course not. I had no idea he meant any of those threats."

"Threats?" Armitage pounced, and I realized that I had gone and put my foot in it rather badly. My momentary hesitation only encouraged her apparent belief that something was up. "Well? Out with it, Kuga."

"When I showed Adair that I had proof of his liaisons and his visits to Dr. Marberry, he got angry. He claimed that he'd get even, that he'd ruin me for this and so on. You know the kind of threats I mean; you must have heard them dozens of times from criminals that you've arrested."

"I have," she said, nodding, "and many times those criminals mean to act on those threats. Adair wasn't even in jail, so he was free to take whatever steps he wanted. And you say you ignored him?"

"I won't have you speaking of Ronald as if he was a common criminal," the Countess snapped. "Obviously these letters refer to a plan to expose Miss Kuga's corrupt practices. That is what he meant by 'ruin,' 'destruction,' and so forth—to bring her low through her own sins."

There were far too many points in those accusations to answer them all at once. Ignoring the Countess, I focused on Armitage.

"Because Adair wasn't the kind of man to go through with it. It's like I told you; he was a child who was used to getting whatever he wanted because of his face and his name. He didn't have the guts." My mind was starting to work again. "Look at that last letter you read. It sounded like Adair got cold feet for whatever he was up to."

"You will not slander Ronald any further!" the Countess snapped.

"The point is," the Inspector continued to ignore Lady Maynooth, "that these letters prove that Adair _did_ have some plan for you, together with this partner of his, the way that Lady Hilda suggested. Regardless of who the moving party was, he _did_ make threats and he _did_ intend to act on them. And you say that you knew none of this?"

"No, I didn't."

"Nor had any idea who this partner of his could be?"

"None at all! I didn't have any idea that he was up to anything, let alone that he had a partner."

"Just admit it, why don't you? You found out that Ronald meant to expose you and you killed him before he had the chance!" Hilda Adair seemed on the point of flying at me again. "Lady Haruka, why don't you arrest her?"

"Because there isn't any evidence against her," Armitage said flatly. "There's nothing to explain how she or anyone else could have committed the crime without anyone hearing the shot or leaving traces." She turned to me. "They're right about one thing. You're a person of interest in this case, Kuga, and until the facts become clear, it would be inappropriate for you to consult on it. You can expect us later for a former interview."

"It's 'formal,' Lady Haruka."

"Wait, you actually believe this nonsense? You suspect me of murder on _their_ say-so?"

"You expect me to suspect Adair of scandalous acts on yours," she pointed out. "These letters are dated throughout this past month. Right up to the time of his death, the evidence shows that he was involved in a scheme directed against you. You know as well as I do what kind of questions that raises."

"...Fine," I huffed with bad grace. _A suspect! She actually considers me a suspect!_ The idea was almost offensive, and yet there it was. She'd come to me for help solving this murder and ended up accusing me of it. It was ludicrous, a farce.

_Yet, isn't that what you'd have said about the Maupertuis killing last April?_

Armitage turned to call out the door at a passing housemaid.

"Hey, you there!"

"Yes, Inspector?"

"Finally, someone in this house uses my right title," she muttered under her breath, then returned to her usual speaking voice. "Have someone fetch a cab for Miss Kuga."

The housemaid dropped a quick curtsey.

"Yes, Inspector." She darted off.

"Send me your bill for this morning," Armitage said. She was always fair, I had to admit, within her strict definition of fairness.

"Oh, believe me, I will, right down to the cab fare."

I stalked out of the room beneath the hate-filled stares of the Adair women, the arch contempt of the Countess and the hot, reckless anger of the girl. The latter was laced with a fierce, gloating triumph at my discomfiture, although it was clear this was only a momentary sop for her fury. I heard the whisper of skirts behind me in the hall and turned; Chrysant had followed me out of the study.

"Miss Kuga, you're not...angry with Lady Haruka, are you?"

"She came to my home, rousted me out before I'd even had the chance to dress for the day so I could assist her with one of her cases, then promptly dismissed me from the case because the victim's family refuses to believe that their golden child was really garbage. Yes, Miss Chrysant, I'm angry with Inspector Armitage."

She flinched slightly, then rallied to her idol's defense.

"Lady Haruka doesn't believe them; she's just following proper procedure. You're probably going to be an important witness in the case, so she has to treat you that way instead of as a disinterested expert. If she had known this in advance she would not have gotten you..."

"Or she would have, but for questioning across my breakfast table instead of dragging me down here?" I finished off for her.

"Yes, exactly. She didn't mean you any discourtesy."

"Next time, maybe she should say so in person instead of having you apologize for her."

I left her gaping as I turned and continued to the house's front door. Apparently my talk with Chrysant, though brief, had been long enough for someone to call up a cab; a four-wheeler waited behind Armitage's five-glass landau.

"221 Baker Street," I told the cabby, pulled open the door, and got in. The driver's whip snapped, and the horses began to pull the cab out into Park Lane. As it was just starting to move, though, the far door was wrested open and a woman in a maid's white cap and apron flung herself onto the facing seat, then leaned out the window and called out an address in Bond Street that I recognized; it was the shop of gunsmith Yvette Hélène, whose services I used regularly.

"What do you think you're doing? I don't have any business there."

She pulled her head back into the carriage and turned to me.

"On the contrary, Natsuki, we need to go there at once."

I stared at her, dumbfounded, but not any more at her actions. That minor concern had been swept aside by a pair of eyes the brilliant crimson of fresh-spilled blood and lips curved in a smile of perfect serenity that was as impenetrable as a veil.

"Shi...zuru?" I managed to force out before darkness swallowed me and I pitched forward in a dead faint.

~X X X~

_A/N: Don't be too hard on Natsuki for fainting; Watson did the same thing at Holmes's return in "The Adventure of the Empty House"!_


	3. Chapter 3

"Natsuki? Natsuki?"

The acrid scent of smelling-salts filled my nose and throat, making me cough. My body convulsed with the action, but soft hands caught me, holding me in place.

"Natsuki, are you all right?"

"Wh-what?" My eyes snapped open as memory returned. "Shizuru! How?" I tried to sit up and in doing so nearly fell off the carriage seat, but she caught me again and helped ease me upright. My head spun a bit, but was mostly free from the effects of the sudden shock. "Shizuru, why aren't you dead?"

She flinched at my sudden question even as she pulled back now that I seemed to be able to sit on my own. She'd obviously helped me back onto the seat after my faint. She looked away, not meeting my gaze, her eyes cast down and to the side.

"Would you prefer if it I was dead?" she said in a very small voice.

"What? No, why would you think—" Then again, what I'd said could certainly be interpreted that way. "No, I don't. I just meant...The last time I saw you, you ran into an inferno after talking about ending things. I'd thought you'd killed yourself out of some twisted idea that I could put it all behind me and start over."

Shizuru let out a deep sigh.

"_Kannin na_, Natsuki. I did intend that to be the last time we saw one another, and for the reasons you suggest, but not as a suicide. Although I am sure your thoughts towards me could not have been kind, I would not have wanted you to think that I killed myself for your sake, not after I had kept you from staining your hands with the blood of someone whom you had a right to vengeance upon." She sighed again. "I do not think I was fully in my right mind that night or else I would have seen what the likely assumption you would make would be. I am truly sorry if I caused you any pain."

_If she caused me any pain? _If_ she caused me—_ I knew, deep down, that she hadn't meant her words that way, but after what I'd gone through these past six months, right up to and including this very morning, my temper flared up red and raw.

"Pain?" I roared at her. "_If_ you caused me pain? You turned everything I'd thought about our relationship on its head, confessed in the same breath to loving me romantically and committing several murders for my sake—and before I had a chance to so much as think about what any of it meant to me you told me it was the end between us and flung yourself into an inferno! You as good as cut my bloody heart out of my chest without a warning, Shizuru Viola, and I don't know whether to shout because I am so bloody glad you're somehow alive or kill you all over again for what you put me through!"

I slammed my fist, hard, into the cab door for emphasis; it sent a jolt up my arm but the pain actually felt good in its way. It was tangible, _real_, not witchcraft. Everything about Shizuru was on shifting sands in my mind and I couldn't trust it, not her and not my own feelings.

My outburst had, at least, gotten her to look at me and more than that had gotten through to her; she was wide-eyed, thunderstruck. She just stared at me for the longest time before words slipped from her lips.

"I...had no idea..."

"Bloody hell, Shizuru, what did you _think_ I would feel? Did you believe that all our time together meant nothing? That even without all the last-second shocks that I would just smile and move on with my life? Or that the things you said and did would repulse me so much that it would somehow cancel it all out?"

"Then...Natsuki does—"

"_No_, goddamn it, you're not pushing me away that way again. You always do that, slip into the third person when you want to create space between us or make little observations that you can't bring yourself to say _to_ me, but you haven't earned the right to play that game. If you have something to say to me, then have the guts to say it to me directly without the tricks." I had never realized that while we were living together, but it had fallen into place while I tried to come to terms with her loss. I'd spent many a long, miserable hour reliving every moment between us I could remember, searching for what, I don't know. Hints of her feelings, maybe. Something I could have done to avoid the disaster it had ended up being.

It was bad enough being full of regrets without being completely sure of what it was I was regretting.

I'd thrown Shizuru completely off-balance, I could tell; the only time I'd known her to show this much confusion, been this upset, was in that last, horrific confrontation before she vanished from my life. Maybe this was actually worse; as she'd said, she hadn't really been in her right mind at that point. I could see that now, how just as the secrets I'd been keeping (with varying success, not that I'd known that) from her had been tearing at me, so had her secrets, her actions, her fears for me all combined to put terrible stress on her.

They say that genius is a close cousin to madness, and she'd been pushed across that line in those days. My sympathy for her was just one more reason why my feelings were so mixed now. And yet if she'd _talked_ to me then, got some of those secrets out—and unlike my secrets, which were all about my past, my life, _her_ secrets all centered on _me_ and so I had some kind of honest claim on them—maybe there could have been a better way.

It was almost ironic. That last week, when I'd been under the Obsidian Court's death sentence, I'd wrestled with myself time and again. _Tell her. Don't tell her._ Should or shouldn't I reveal my secrets to her? And yet it was she, not me, who'd faced the same decision and for whom it had been ultimately more important.

Slowly, she nodded.

"I shall try, Natsuki, although it has become a...no, not a habit, more than that. A kind of armor, I suppose, just as you say."

"After what you did, you don't get to wear armor," I snapped.

She winced, squeezing her eyes shut as if she'd been struck. I guess she had. What else were my sharp words, my rejection? Although, wasn't my anger also proof that I _wasn't_ rejecting her—or at least, that there were firm ties between us that provoked emotion, couldn't just be brushed aside and dismissed?

Why couldn't anything to do with Shizuru ever be easy?

"I understand," she said slowly. She fisted her hands in her housemaid's apron and tears began to leak from between her closed eyelids. "I handled everything so badly. All I wanted was to keep you safe, to protect you from the people who wanted to kill you and to protect you from carrying the weight of what needed to be done to stop them, plus the burden of my feelings for you. And yet it all went so wrong. I couldn't even take myself out of your life in the right way, it seems."

"Why didn't you just tell me?" I asked. "I would have been angry that you'd pried into my affairs, but it would have been better than where things ended up."

"You asked that same question that night."

"I know, and you didn't answer."

A faint, sad smile came over her lips.

"Didn't I?"

_Not in words, at least._ I could still feel the tingle of her lips on mine, their softness, their gentle yet urgent heat. _But no, I'm right. That was certainly a response, but not an answer._

"No, you didn't. Not in words and not in any way that makes sense."

"You are cruel today, Natsuki, to make me say it."

"I'm not good at subtlety. If you're going to want me to understand you, then you're going to have to put it out there in plain English for me to hear."

"...Fine. If you want me to say it, then I will. It's a penance that I've earned several times over. If I had explained to you the things that I'd done, how I'd treasured every little bit of your past that you let slip and how I'd gone ahead and researched those pieces to give me a fuller idea of the truth, you'd have demanded to know why, would you not?"

"Absolutely."

"Because it went well beyond simple curiosity, beyond observing and deducing from what was in front of me. I took active steps to violate your privacy out of a combination of concern for your welfare and"—she swallowed nervously—"out of fascination with you, wanting to know everything about you. Then you'd have demanded to know what it was that drove me to those emotions."

She stopped, paused, and took a deep breath.

"Then I would have had to explain that I had fallen in love with N—with you," she hastily amended. "I was terrified of your reaction. I thought that you would be revolted by my interest, that you would drive me away. I determined that I would rather remain by your side as your friend than to lose you completely, and help you any way I could." She dropped her head again. "Only, events moved too quickly, and I found myself torn. Your life was threatened and I had information that you lacked, that might be able to save your life, only I couldn't bring myself to tell you. So in the end I did the only thing I thought I could do. I...took action on my own."

"And people died."

"And I killed people," she said, putting it into plain speech, without dissembling. "It all went wrong, in every possible way."

"You should have trusted me."

"I see that now, as I even failed to give you a clean break from your past. I should have given you the information and taken myself out of your life properly instead of selfishly wanting to stay close to you until I found myself in a trap where you were under the Obsidian Court's death sentence."

I shook my head.

"That isn't what I meant, Shizuru. I don't know, now, how I would have reacted if you'd told me everything, say, last March. I do know, though, that it would have been the violation of you looking into my past without my invitation that would have been the real problem, not you confessing your love."

"Natsuki, do you forget that I was there as well? You shoved me away, physically rejected—"

"You'd just killed a man in front of me—the man who was behind my mother's death and therefore the architect of all the bad things that had happened in my life!" I shot back, wondering as I did how someone so intelligent could still, somehow, not understand. "Then you'd confessed to three other killings, plus however many of the Obsidian Prince's killers you'd had to go through to get to the vault and the library. Add to that how you'd told me about the things you'd done in going behind my back looking into my life. And then, _then_ you confessed your love right there in front of the corpse and _kissed_ me! How did you _think_ I would react? You'd thrown shock after shock at me until I could barely string two words together, let alone rationally digest what I thought about you or about being the object of another woman's love."

"Then Natsu—Then you would—"

She seemed unable to get the words out, which was a strange experience for me, seeing her tongue-tied. But then, I'd had six long, cold months to prepare me for this, to do the thinking I hadn't had time for in the Obsidian Prince's library.

"I'm not a naïve innocent, Shizuru. I've heard of and seen lesbianism before. I know that there are women who prefer their own sex just like some men are the same way. Did it surprise me that you are one? Yes, it did, but the things you did _because_ you love me are a lot more important than that you _do_ love me."

Now it was my turn to take a deep breath. My anger wasn't ebbing, but it didn't make me any better at revealing my own feelings.

"Honestly, Shizuru, I'm...I'm flattered that someone like you could say that you love me. I'm not a very good person in a lot of ways and you—you're kind, brilliant, caring, beautiful, and you were the best friend that I ever had. I don't even know how it's possible that you could have feelings for me, let alone ones that could drive you to do what you did to protect me. I mean, Shizuru, you basically threw away everything you believe in for my sake. I didn't even get to understand what that meant to me until you were gone."

Shizuru bit at her knuckle in a nervous gesture that was very unlike her.

"Natsuki..."

The tears were still coming.

"Natsuki, I...I don't know what to say. If...if I had only trusted you, if I'd had the courage to tell you the truth..."

"It's not like I was all that forthcoming, either," I admitted. "I had all these reasons for holding back the truth—it was my private business and no one else's, I wanted to keep you safe from Obsidian Court reprisals, I didn't want to make you choose between condoning a crime and trying to stop me—but they were nothing but foolish excuses. I...damn it, the plain truth is that I didn't have the courage to trust you, either, not until it was too late to do anything about it. We were both of us all tied up in knots inside, driven to the edge of madness by the things that were happening around us and how they struck right at the deepest parts of our hearts."

Sensations seemed to flood me as I said that, memories called up by my admission. _The slight resistance felt in fingers and wrist as a dull knife cut into a would-be killer's face. The flex of my trigger finger as I fired a shot into a man's body. My hands tightening around the windpipe of the man I'd hunted all my life._ Who was I to claim the moral high ground against Shizuru? At least her madness had been to protect the person she loved. Mine was solely for the culmination of a lifetime's quest for vengeance.

"Our souls were laid bare by everything we went through, all our masks and armor torn away to expose our hearts, and neither one of us came away looking clean or pretty. Dark times...they bring out the best in people sometimes, but also the worst. Or some of each, maybe, but nothing in between."

"You...that is very insightful, Natsuki."

I blushed slightly at her praise.

"I had a lot of time to think about it." I'd meant it as a polite demurral of any suggestion that I'd had some flash of brilliance, but even as I said it a flood of bitterness came rushing through me, and the tone of the last few words came out tainted by it.

"Six months," Shizuru murmured.

"Six months," I agreed. "You talked about wanting me to be able to start over, free of the past, but how could I? I had nothing to start over _with_. My vengeance was over and done, my mother's memory finally laid to rest, and you were gone, too. Everything in my life that really meant something to me was gone and all I could do was mourn." _An empty heart in an empty house_, I thought, and at last the feelings that had been held at bay first by shock and astonishment, later by anger, crashed over me. I didn't even bother trying to restrain them, but flung myself across the gap between the seats and crushed her to me in a fierce embrace.

"Natsuki?" Shizuru yelped, no doubt as caught off-guard by my sudden change of mood as I was.

"Shizuru," I forced out in a voice that barely reached a whisper, I was so suddenly choked up. "I am _so damned glad_ to see you again." The tears came then for me, too, hot and streaming down my face. My arms were probably squeezing her painfully, but she made no effort to try and move away or even to loosen my grip. Instead, after a minute or so, her own hands came up and lightly closed around my waist.

"I am, too, so very much," she said. "I was so, so sure that you would hate me for all of it."

"No, not that. Be angry as hell, but never hate."

She let out a long breath.

"_Ookini_, Natsuki, for that," she murmured back, nestling her face against my shoulder, and for a long while neither one of us moved, despite the jostling from the cab ride and my awkward position. To my surprise, it was Shizuru who shifted first.

"I think that I could stay like this forever," she murmured, and her words made me suddenly conscious of the fact that I was embracing a woman who had openly professed her love for me. A love that was emotional, yes, but also _physical_, sexual in nature. I could feel the softness of her bosom pressed against mine, the heat of her hips against my thighs even through our clothing. I couldn't remember a time when I was ever so aware of another person's presence in any way other than as to gauge the threat they presented, and I found myself blushing hotly. "But right now, we don't have the time."

She slipped her way free, the sensation of her squirming against me for that moment just increasing my discomfiture, and I leaned back into my own seat. Her eyes rested curiously on my blushing face, but she made no reference to it—and I spoke up quickly so she didn't get the chance to change her mind.

"Why not? What's so urgent?" I blinked as I realized what I should have guessed ten seconds after I saw her face, and should have known for certain the moment that she told me how she thought I would feel about her. "You came back for a reason. You were going to stay away forever and until just now you thought I'd want it that way. So why did you do it? Why dress up as the Adairs' housemaid and jump into my cab? And why are we going to Mlle. Hélène's?" I'd almost forgotten that among the emotional pyrotechnics.

"I went to the house in disguise in order to investigate the crime. Among other things, I was able to get a look at the morning post. Luckily, I got to it before the Countess or the Inspector did."

She reached under her apron and brought out a buff-colored envelope which had already been slit open. It had been posted to Ronald Adair the night before and the handwriting strongly resembled that which I'd seen on the letters Lady Hilda had produced. Shizuru gave me the envelope and I took the letter out.

_My Dear Mr. Adair,_

_I am writing to you with an urgent warning. I fear that your plans are discovered, or else Miss Kuga has taken your initial threats to heart. She has arranged for a special purchase from Yvette Hélène, the master gunsmith. I can only imagine that she has dark plans for you, and perhaps myself if she has become aware of my part in this. You are a marked man! I urge you to take care, avoiding open windows where you would present a clear target. I am preparing to take steps to neutralize her, but as you are well aware it all means nothing if it comes to grief._

_Yours, M._

I looked incredulously from the letter to Shizuru.

"This letter as good as accuses me of murdering Adair!"

She nodded.

"I believe that is its entire purpose for existing. Fortunately, I intercepted it unopened and unread."

"So the only people who know about this are you and I?"

"Together with the person who wrote it," she added, which was a valid point.

I passed it back to Shizuru.

"So 'M' is the killer, then?"

She smiled at me, the old expression I knew so well.

"Natsuki is very—" She broke off, her face falling. "_Kannin na_; I am...finding it a more difficult habit to break than I should."

Belatedly, I plucked my handkerchief from my pocket and blotted my face.

"It's all right," I assured her. "Your teasing...it's not the same thing. Well, it is, a little. But not really. You're not hiding from me with it."

"I see. Thank you."

Her smile returned.

"In any event, the important thing is that I believe that you are correct. Mr. Adair's correspondent did not write _this_ letter as part of their normal exchange, but instead posted this so that the police's attention would be pointed directly at you. Combined with the family's attitude, this would make matters very uncomfortable. And conveniently it contains not only a clue to the identity of whom the writer wants them to chase, but also a clue to _how_. The precise mechanism of this crime is still unknown, I believe?"

"It is to me, and if Armitage knows, she wasn't saying. Which probably means that she doesn't know."

"Indeed."

"So this letter was supposed to lead the police to Mlle. Hélène, who was supposed to tell them how I was able to put a bullet in Adair without anyone in the house—wait, this is about the sound suppressor, isn't it?" The idea came to me rather belatedly. "But that doesn't _silence_ a shot—it makes it quieter, but not inaudible."

"True, but it could still be argued that it was the reduction in noise that caused the household not to notice, particularly if the shot was fired from outside the house."

"Leaving no tracks?"

"Natsuki is well-skilled in stealth. I could easily imagine that you are able to approach a house without leaving traces, or at least that such traces could only be found by an expert."

"Exactly whose side are you on?" I groused.

"Yours, always. You see, there is a very good reason why this letter cannot be talking about the suppressor."

"Oh? What?"

"It says that you 'have arranged for a special purchase'—that is, a _new_ purchase, of something which presumably would aid you in killing Adair. You bought the suppressor six months ago for an entirely different reason, before you had ever heard of Adair. It cannot possibly be the 'special purchase' you supposedly bought."

"Then what is? I haven't seen Mlle. Hélène for two months. Whomever wrote this letter must expect her to tell the police _something_, or else what good does it do to write it? So what do they think she will say?"

"Thus, our visit to her shop, so that we can find that out directly from her."


	4. Chapter 4

Yvette Hélènewas an old school friend of our—my—landlady. Mrs. Hudson had directed me to her while Shizuru was still living in Baker Street and I'd found her to be quite skilled at her work. She was a Frenchwoman and carried herself with the style and aplomb one expected from her nationality, even despite the fact that she was dressed for work rather than fashion in a plain brown dress and a heavy, scarred, and stained apron.

"Miss Kuga!" she greeted me happily when the jingling bell announced me coming through the door. "I'd thought you'd given up on personal visits," she added in a slightly chiding tone. "And who—oh, is that Miss Viola? Moira had not told me that you were back together."

I could feel my cheeks grow hot at her choice of phrase. "Back together" almost made it sound like Shizuru and I had reunited after a lovers' spat. Which I supposed wasn't completely off-base; our relationship _had_ as good as been a family one, only without the romantic and sexual aspects.

_"C'est un plaisir de vous rencontrer enfin, Mlle Hélène. Je comprends que vous avez été une grande aide pour Natsuki."_

"_Merci beaucoup_. But perhaps she would appreciate it if we continued in a language she speaks."

"If you say one word about getting the chance to speak a properly civilized Latin language I'm tossing you out in the street," I muttered to Shizuru, who looked surprised, then smiled. It took me a couple of seconds to realize why—after I had spent most of the cab ride reaming her out over the past, and given her own fears, there was very little chance that she'd be inclined to risk hurting me by teasing. _I_ was the one who had slipped back into old patterns of behavior, expecting our usual casual banter.

No wonder she'd smiled. I could only imagine how happy that had made her.

Neither that nor the emotional aftermath of our reunion seemed to have had an effect on her deductive abilities, though, as she'd already noticed something which I'd missed.

"Mlle. Hélène," she said, "you said that you thought Natsuki had given up on personal visits? I take it that you recently carried out a commission for her in which she only wrote to you?"

"Yes, exactly, the Von Herder."

"The what?" I asked, recognizing precisely nothing of the subject.

"The Von Herder. I delivered it as per your instructions last week. I don't mind saying that you were quite curt in your letters; I am not at all happy with—_Zut!_" She glanced from my confused face to Shizuru's knowing one. "I have been taken in, have I not?"

"I am afraid so, mademoiselle." Shizuru turned to me. "You see, Natsuki, this is how 'M' prepared things to further incriminate you. When questioned by the police, Mlle. Hélène would be in a position to tell them about the purchase. The fact that it was not done by your normal method, if she volunteered this information, would likely be put down to the nature of the use you supposedly were to put this 'Von Herder' to. After all, you could hardly present in your own defense the fact that you have previously purchased items from Mlle. Hélène intended for similar purposes in face-to-face transactions."

"Only once," I said, a little defensively. "What's a Von Herder, anyway?"

"A model of air-gun. It's named after Johannes Von Herder, who designed it in 1888. He was widely believed to be the greatest armsmaster of his generation and he lived up to his reputation with this. It fires a .38-caliber revolver bullet, the same type used in the cartridges for many navy revolvers, with an effective range of over 100 yards. As there is no explosive propellant the projectile is subsonic, firing in near-silence. In short, it is a perfect assassin's weapon: silent, accurate over long ranges, and lethal. They were never mass-produced and are quite rare."

"But you found one for this person who claimed to be me?"

"_Mais non._"

"Huh?"

"I _made_ one for you—for her. It was quite the challenge, but as I did not have to invent it, merely construct it from the notes I had available, it was not impossible."

"I think we can testify to the quality of your work," I grumbled. "It would explain all the questions surrounding the Adair shooting. The killer's firing position could be well away from the house so as not to leave traces, the qualities of the head wound explained by the bullet fired and the low-velocity impact, and no one in the neighborhood would have heard a shot. Armitage got the Countess to consent to an autopsy, and I'll wager the police surgeon retrieves a .38 revolver bullet from Adair's skull."

"The Adair murder!" Hélène exclaimed. "I read about that in this morning's paper! And you believe that my gun was used in that crime?"

"Yes, but not by me!"

"I believe you." 

I blinked.

"Just like that?"

"The suppressor," Shizuru supplied. Mlle. Hélène's eyes flicked towards her.

"She knows everything," I said.

"Ah." Hélène gave us both a smile that held a world of meaning in it, quite living up to the reputation of her countrywomen in such matters. "Then yes, she is quite right. We've already dealt together in that affair. Why would you suddenly become shy about meeting with me? I'd considered that your change in temperament might have been owing to Miss Viola's disappearance—"

Mrs. Hudson, I decided, talked far too much, worried about her lodger or not.

"—but it's much easier to believe that someone simply pretended to be you."

Her belief in my innocence made me unaccountably happy.

"Mlle. Hélène, you said that the person purporting to be Natsuki communicated with you by letter. Did you keep any of them?" Shizuru asked.

"Yes, I did."

"May we see them?"

"Of course."

She disappeared into the back room; after a few moments she returned with a small packet of letters which she placed on the counter. Shizuru and I glanced them over.

"It is a respectable imitation of Natsuki's handwriting," Shizuru concluded, "especially as it appears to be amateur work, not that of a professional forger. May we take this letter with us, mam'selle?" She held up the most recent of the set.

"Certainly. May I ask why?"

"I would like to compare it to another letter to see if the handwriting matches, for one thing."

"I thought that you already knew Adair's partner was the murderer," I pointed out.

"Knowing is one thing. Proving it is another. It would be quite useful if we could prove the false Natsuki who ordered the air-gun is also the writer of the letter accusing you. Inspector Armitage would be sure that you were being framed and effectively clear you of suspicion. Furthermore, the letter contains delivery instructions, giving rise to possible future leads."

"You think the killer is stupid enough to use a real address instead of a dead drop?" I was dubious; knowledge of my connection to Hélène. knowledge of the existence of the air-gun, skill at _using_ the air-gun, and skill at forgery, plus the time and trouble required to set everything up told me of an opponent who was skilled in tradecraft. That kind of person didn't make clumsy mistakes unless they were driven to them.

It was not a comfortable feeling.

"I doubt it," Shizuru agreed with me. "Nonetheless, there may be other evidence to be gained, traces left behind or an unexpected witness or the choice of time and place may reveal something about the person's ability to conveniently access a location."

I nodded, following her reasoning.

"If nothing else, if we can show that someone other than myself picked up the air-gun, then that would go a long way towards proving that I had been framed."

"May I assume, Mlle. Hélène put in, "that if you are speaking of handwriting comparisons, that you do not wish me to, what is the idiom? Ah! To lie myself blue in the face should the police make inquiries?"

"Absolutely not," Shizuru stated. "With another investigating officer, it might be best if he was kept in the dark, but Haruka Armitage has sufficient intelligence to follow the facts. Moreover, she takes a very stern view of being lied to, so might well press charges of withholding evidence should it come to light. The full and complete story will do best, I think."

The Frenchwoman smiled knowingly.

"Ah, and you mean including such details as how surprised I was that Natsuki wrote me letters instead of calling in person, and how unnatural it was since in the past we had always discussed her special projects in person?"

Shizuru smiled back.

"I believe we understand each other perfectly."

"I appreciate the offer, though," I added. It wasn't every day that a person volunteers to perjure themselves for you.

"Natsuki's acquaintances are few in number, but are very loyal," Shizuru remarked.

"And some more than that, hm?"

I had the rare and satisfying experience of seeing _Shizuru_ blush at Mlle. Hélène's comment. While she was still caught off-guard, I thanked the gunsmith for her help.

"Not at all; it is the least I could do to make up for allowing myself to be used in this plot. I feel sick that I assisted in this Adair murder, even unknowingly."

"Don't be too upset," I noted. "He was hardly a loss. And the bullet in his brain was a lot more merciful than if the syphilis had reached there."

It wasn't until we were out in Bond Street again that I realized the importance of what I'd just said.

"Shizuru, you don't think it could have been suicide, do you?" I asked her. "Well, not _literally_ suicide, but that it was Adair's plan all along that 'M' would shoot him and frame me for the crime? He would get a clean and easy death out of it and revenge on me at the same time...no, wait, that's no good."

"It sounded very well-imagined to me," Shizuru said, "particularly if what you said about Mr. Adair having syphilis is true."

"You're doubting me, too?" I yelped, a little stung. I'd been a little too loud in my yelping, apparently, because several passerby turned in my direction.

"I was not doubting Na—you. I merely had not heard this about Mr. Adair."

"Okay, now _that_ I don't believe. Since when do I do better detective work than you? If I uncovered that, surely you would have."

"Natsuki, I know nothing of Mr. Adair or his family beyond what I have read in the papers and _DeBrett's_. I have not investigated him at all. But you say that you have? Is this why he wanted revenge against you?"

"Yeah, I found out that he was an inveterate womanizer who'd caught the pox from somewhere in his adventures. His fiance's parents didn't consider this to be a good quality in a son-in-law, so the engagement was called off. Adair hated me for ruining his fun and his family hates me for smearing their golden boy's reputation. I can't be sure if the Countess really disbelieves me or is just angry about the Maynooth dirty laundry being aired; Lady Hilda genuinely thinks I made it all up, I'm sure. She's one of those little sisters who utterly worships her brother."

Shizuru nodded.

"I see...but Natsuki, what were you doing investigating Mr. Adair in the first place?"

"It was a job; I've been working as an inquiry agent these past three months, you know that."

"No, Natsuki, I did not."

I blinked in surprise.

"But how? It's the most obvious thing about me; you wouldn't even need to use your famous powers of observation and deduction."

"Yes, but I would still need to—" She stopped suddenly and grabbed my wrist. "Natsuki, do you think that I've been keeping an eye on your activities since we last saw each other?"

"Of course. It's a little bit creepy, realizing it when I thought you were dead all these months, but I know you'd never hurt me, so—"

"Natsuki, I promise you, I've done no such thing. I admit, more than once I thought of checking up on you to see how you were doing, but I never did. I'd promised to take myself out of your life cleanly, and I would not have broken that promise to myself if you were not in danger now over this Adair matter."

"Then you mean you _haven't—_" I thought back to our conversation in the four-wheeler. That talk had all been about emotions: hers, mine, the secrets we'd kept and the pain we'd caused each other with our mutual cowardice about our feelings. Now, though, I looked at the actual content, the implied _facts_, trying to employ Shizuru's own methods.

What I came up with was this: _Shizuru had had no idea how I'd suffered after she'd left._ She'd assumed I was happy to be rid of her. But no one who spent any time observing me could have missed my feelings. Mrs. Hudson, Mai, Mikoto—they'd all seen me at my worst. Bouts of melancholia like mine were not subtle. Even Yukino Chrysant had seen and understood, I thought, recalling her looks of sympathy this morning.

No matter how much Shizuru might want to believe that her leaving had made me happy, she'd never have been able to miss the truth, not with her skills.

Therefore, she'd been telling me the truth. She hadn't been hovering at the edge of my orbit like a wraith of my past life, watching over me.

I sighed and smiled at her.

"Thank you, Shizuru."

She blinked at me.

"For not watching you?"

"You might have been dead wrong about the effect your going away had on me, but you meant it sincerely. You weren't playing games or trying to have it both ways."

"I would not play games about love."

"Yeah, but I don't have much experience with the emotion, feeling it or being the object of it. And last time..." 

I let it hang there, both because I wasn't about to say it out on the street and because I wasn't comfortable going back to discussing that nightmare after we'd managed to find some kind of common ground for putting it behind us. Shizuru got the point, though.

"Last time," she said flatly, "I was wrong in everything but my desire to protect you. I at least learned that on my own, although I needed today to complete the lesson."

"Which is why I thanked you, because you _did_ learn it."

"You have indeed been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you? I do not believe the old Natsuki would have considered things in that way."

"Probably not," I admitted, and then let a smile flick over my lips. An ironic one, because it seemed for the second time that day that the time I'd spent grieving had left me with clear thoughts now that Shizuru had returned. I'd have preferred a better path to wisdom, thank you. "So what now?"

"I need to analyze the handwriting of these letters. The first step is to prove your innocence, and showing that Mr. Adair's correspondent is framing you is the easiest step in that direction. Inspector Armitage can have her own experts test the letters which Mlle. Hélène still has."

"So that's why you only took the one."

She nodded.

"Exactly; I wanted to make sure that an independent analysis could be done on a sample which we did not have in our own hands. I make an excellent witness, of course, but not as persuasive where my own..." She fumbled for a word to describe our relationship and failed. "Where it concerns you. Once that is established, we can turn our attention to catching this person."

We turned and started walking again. Shizuru raised her hand, beckoning, and a hansom pulled up in response to her summons. Apparently she still had that power.

"Where to, ladies?" the cabby asked as we climbed inside. Shizuru gave him an address in Soho.

"Is that where you've been living all this time?"

The cabby shut the trapdoor and the hansom began to move. Shizuru shook her head.

"No, only for the past few weeks. I've moved about quite a bit, even to spending most of my time on the Continent."

"I see." There wasn't really much I could say to that. I could have asked her about what she'd been up to during the time we'd been apart, but if her past six months had been anything like mine—and given what I knew about the strength of her feelings I suspected that her grief and misery might even have been worse—it would be like jabbing at her soul with a red-hot needle.

_Where did that come from?_ I marveled at my thoughts' sudden florid turn of phrase.

"Now, as to this suicide theory of yours," Shizuru began to fill the silence, but I waved a hand dismissively.

"Never mind that. It was just my writer's imagination getting all Gothic and overwrought."

"I thought it made a good deal of sense the way you explained it. Mr. Adair would escape a tormenting slide into diseased madness. He would not destroy the positive image of himself in his family's eyes that the advance of the disease or the search for the cause of a conventional suicide would do. And he would attempt to get revenge on you, the person who forced him to confront the truth of his position."

"Yes, but...Shizuru, Adair was a worm. For all his exterior charm, he was a little, slimy thing inside. He knew he was poxy, but he kept on sleeping with anything he could, from prostitutes to open-minded or loose women. A few moments' pleasure was more to him than their health, their lives. He lied to his family rather than take responsibility. He raved at me about getting revenge instead of showing sorrow. Suicide...it's a curious place between cowardice and courage. A person has to be afraid enough of the future in order to run from it, but brave enough to take the step of ending it all. Everything about Adair showed him as living in the moment, giving in to every impulse instead of considering the consequences. As Armitage might put it, he didn't have the guts."

Shizuru pursed her lips, thinking.

"You knew the man and had studied him, so I will not say that you are wrong. But I do note that there is one difference in this circumstance than than which you mentioned: he did not have to commit the act himself. He did not have to press a gun to his head and pull the trigger, or put a rope around his neck and step off a chair, or take a knife to his wrists, or turn up the gas and lie down, or hurl himself from a bridge or in front of a train, or swallow a cup laced with poison."

A tiny shiver of fear slid up my spine at her recital of various suicide methods. _Had she been thinking about this before?_ I wondered. _I'd_ tried to nearly pickle myself in alcohol those first few weeks, and only Mrs. Hudson's strong support, then later Mai's, had allowed me to get my feet back under me. I didn't even know if Shizuru _had_ friends who could support her, who could point out that the seeming end of everything was not, in fact, so.

"I went home to Venice and stayed with my parents, among other things," Shizuru answered my thoughts, which I could only guess were written plainly on my face. "They had never had to face the impact of a _lost_ love, but were fully awake to the power of the kind of emotion I felt."

"Because they've been through it themselves." Shizuru had told me about them, how her Italian father and Japanese mother had made a runaway match of it, costing her father his diplomatic career and inheritance, cutting her mother off from everything she'd ever known, and setting them both at odds with their families. If nothing else, she certainly came by honestly the intensity of her own love and the extremes to which it had driven her.

The moment seemed to call for something else, some balancing of the scales, so I added, "I spent a couple of weeks trying to give myself alcohol poisoning before Mrs. Hudson kicked my ass about that. So I guess we're both a pair of prize idiots, huh?"

We looked at each other and eyes full of regret slowly gave way to rueful grins and finally chuckles at our own absurdity. All that pain, everything we'd gone through was so dreadfully serious and yet we were the cause of it ourselves, no one to blame but our own stupidity. Why _not_ laugh? At least we were alive, well, and here together to appreciate the joke.

At last we let out our breath with long sighs.

"Natsuki, you cannot know how good it felt to do that," she finally said.

"No, I think I can. Although if we keep tripping over our own feelings I don't know how we'll ever get this case solved. Maybe once you finish with the letters we should just turn it over to Armitage and have done with it."

Shizuru shook her head.

"I do not believe that will be possible."

"Oh?"

"There are other factors, but I am sure we need to see this through. I'll explain later, once we have time."

"I'll hold you to that. Oh—while we're talking about the case again, you didn't finish saying why you believed I might have been right the first time about Adair arranging his own murder."

"Ah, yes. It's because in the various kind of normal suicides I mentioned, the actor has to take a positive step, to screw his courage to the sticking place"—funny, the letter had used the same Shakespeare paraphrase—"to commit that act. If Mr. Adair contracted for 'M' to do it, then he does not have to take that step. _His_ actions are solely hypothetical, removed from the actual causing of death. You will sometimes see criminals do the same thing, launch an attack on armed police so that the police will shoot them dead. They have the courage to _plan_ their suicide but not to commit that last, final act. Had Mr. Adair apparently shot himself I would agree with your assessment, but in this case the inability to truly visualize the future you described might well aid him in this suicide-by-murder."

I thought it over.

"Perhaps you're right. It might explain something in the letters that Armitage read—'M' talked about how Adair was losing his nerve. Maybe as the moment approached it became a little more real to him." I explained about the whiskey he'd drunk as well and how I'd guessed it was to help him steel his nerves for what was coming. "That was a little shaky as far as letter-writing goes, but as for knowing he might be stepping in front of a one-person firing squad..."

"It was your idea, Natsuki. Do not give _me_ the credit for being right."

"Yeah, but for me it was a guess. For you it was taking that guess and examining it in light of what we actually know. There's a difference. I was ready to toss out the whole idea."

"You do me far too much credit. There is no proof I was right, after all. 'M' may have acted alone—or, perhaps 'M' was not even the killer. The letter I intercepted could have been written in good faith, perhaps because 'M' confused the real killer with you as the killer intended."

"You don't believe that for a minute."

"Of course not—but I cannot rule it out without proof. As we are almost to our destination, however, with luck I should have that proof within a very short time."

~X X X~

_A/N: I must thank my friend Fuyu no Sora for the line of French that Shizuru says to Mlle. Hélène! The "Von Herder" air-gun, on the other hand, is taken from the original Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Empty House," where Holmes states that it was Von Herder who made the air-rifle used by Colonel Sebastian Moran to kill Ronald Adair and make an attempt on Holmes himself._


	5. Chapter 5

Shizuru's lodgings were in a building that I guessed catered mostly to down-and-out theatrical types: bit-part actors, dancers who hadn't attracted a protector, music-hall artists who spent their careers buried in the middle of the program. A slatternly landlady eyed us with vague interest as we walked up the stairs to the garret. I nearly bumped my head on the canted roof until I stepped into the center of the room under the peak.

The garret was not a pleasant place. The furniture—a narrow bed, a night-table on which stood a basin and pitcher, a wardrobe, and a single chair—was cheap and even rickety. Unlike the landing and foyer, though, everything was immaculately clean, which was obviously Shizuru's own doing.

She opened the shutters to let in as much light as possible, then lit the oil lamp that hung from the ceiling to give even more. Shizuru then fished out a sturdy leather bag from the wardrobe and removed paper, pen, and a strong magnifying lens. She cleared the basin off the night-table, set the two letters down side-by-side, and pulled up the chair.

"Make yourself at home as best you can," she invited. "The bed is safe to sit on; there are no vermin."

"Yeah, I can't see you living for three minutes with a nest of fleas."

"You would be surprised. I once spent the better part of a week haunting a pallet in an opium-den in the guise of a drug-raddled streetwalker. The dirt and the insects were nauseating."

"When was that?"

"About a year before we met; it was the St. Clair disappearance matter, which you probably wouldn't know about. We kept it out of the papers; Inspector Fulton was quite embarrassed to find that he had the missing man locked up in prison in disguise, suspected of his own murder, the entire time."

"You'll have to tell me the whole story sometime; it sounds like it would do well in the _Strand_."

"Perhaps so."

She was peering closely at the letters through her lens, and now and again she made some notes on a sheet of paper. I stretched out on the bed and propped myself up on one elbow so I could watch what she was doing. Handwriting analysis is a lot more interesting in mystery stories than as a spectator sport, though, and I soon rolled onto my back, hands laced behind my head, and started turning over the case in my mind.

"Now, if I have this straight, Adair decided to get revenge on me because I'd discovered his dirty little secret, ended his engagement, and quite possibly put and end to his fun, at least among his own social class." If you asked me, a man who slept with someone knowing that he had syphilis ought to be charged with attempted murder. "So he made an alliance with 'M,' whomever that is. Probably contact was made through an intermediary; I found no evidence that Adair knew any of the more conventional criminal types but he did know pimps, procurers, brothel-keepers, and the managers of gaming dens, so someone could make the arrangements."

I glanced at Shizuru, who didn't really appear to be listening, focused as she was on her task. Of course, with her that wasn't necessarily a giveaway; she could look just the same while being completely engrossed in something else or when paying careful attention.

It really didn't matter much, anyway. I was actually talking to myself; her presence in the room was just an excuse to do it out loud.

"In any case, they talked together and made an arrangement. Further plans were discussed in letters—it's too bad we don't know where Adair wrote to him; maybe it's in his address book or private papers and Armitage will find it. Then, with or without Adair's complicity, 'M' decided to shoot him. He bought an air-gun from Mlle. Hélène while pretending to be me, so that there would be a paper trail with my name on it. Then he shot Adair, perhaps from the window of a closed carriage. A carriage would not attract attention, the windowsill could be used as a brace to steady his aim if need be, and there would be no sound of a shot to attract attention and startle the horses. Then he'd merely have to have the driver move on to complete an unobtrusive getaway."

Shizuru looked up at me.

"You constructed a potential scenario for the murder very quickly," she said, proving that she had indeed been listening. "Your deductive skills are improving."

I blushed a little. Shizuru complimenting me on my deductive skill was like Poe complimenting my mystery-writing.

"It's not that great. You probably came up with that scenario and another half-dozen while we were still talking to Mlle. Hélène."

Shizuru did not respond to my observation, which had been meant rhetorically so there was no need for her to do so, but even so she had not denied it.

"In any case, he then posted the final letter to Adair which you found, in order to point the police in the right direction to begin the frame if they weren't inclined to start investigating me and my known associates by themselves. That brings us to the present. Assuming, that is, that 'M' is also the one who bought the Von Herder, but you'll have evidence of that soon enough."

I turned it over in my mind. Something was missing.

"So what's in it for 'M,' I wonder? Is he someone with a personal grudge? A friend or associate of Adair's from the wrong side of the law that he met during his debaucheries? Or just a hired hand? If it's personal, he'll keep pushing the point, trying to carry out Adair's plan. But a hired killer will want to keep his own neck out of the noose first and foremost since the courts won't be impressed by a suicide pact. What do you think?"

"I believe Na—that you should know that you are not using the correct pronoun," was Shizuru's not precisely on-topic reply.

I blinked.

"Pronoun."

"Our quarry is a woman."

"You got that from her handwriting? Come on, Shizuru, just because I read mystery novels doesn't mean that I believe in the stuff written in them, and the way experts in stories can deduce all kinds of things about a person's attributes and character from their writing."

"Now, Natsuki, graphology has a history dating back to the sixteenth century."

"So do leprechauns, but I'm not digging for pots of gold."

Shizuru giggled, a merry light in her eyes.

"True, and as a matter of fact I agree with you, although many people do believe in its efficacy. Part of the problem, perhaps, is that alienists have only begun to scratch the surface of the nature of the human mind, and so any science purporting to _identify_ traits of character must naturally be limited by our lack of expertise in _defining_ character. Putting that aside, there are points of a woman's writing in terms of handwriting but also choice of language which _tend_ to be different from a man's. Oh, and incidentally while I would like to examine these documents under a microscope to be more certain, I have found eleven separate points thus far suggestive of a similar origin. She backslides on your savagely dramatic Ts, for example."

"Backslides?"

"Her natural handwriting appears to be much more proper and 'ladylike,' you might say. As if the characters were written according to a precise rule learned in school."

"Oh. Like you, then."

Shizuru frowned.

"Natsuki _ikezu_."

"Hey, it's true. You _do_ have elegant handwriting, like you were born to write invitations to fancy dinner parties or something."

"Sister Teresa would be very proud to hear you say so."

"Who's she?"

"My penmanship instructor when I was at school."

I sat up.

"You went to a convent school?" I supposed it wasn't crazy, at that; growing up in Italy with an Italian father she'd very likely be a Roman Catholic. "I thought that your parents ran a school themselves?"

She nodded.

"They do, but they wanted me to have an educational experience where my teachers were not beholden to them for their employment. And I..." She left whatever she was about to add hanging.

"Shizuru?"

She looked at me searchingly for a long moment, as if she was looking for something in my face. If she was, she seemed to have found it, because she continued with what she had been saying.

"Perhaps I wrong them when I say this, but I do sometimes wonder if it was more comfortable for them to not have we children underfoot for substantial periods of time. A love as strong as they feel for one another must be a little selfish, don't you think? My own emotions surely show that, and they were not even feelings which were returned."

She'd confessed something partly similar to me once before, when I'd broken down and shared some of my own uncertainty over my lack of connection to my heritage.

"I don't know, Shizuru," I said. "I can't think that they'd actually think like that...but maybe, in their hearts, it made it easier for them to accept the excuse?"

I'd answered honestly, without thinking, almost by reflex—which was itself strange, because while I was certainly not a _diplomatic_ person I was also a _private_ one, not the kind to just share my feelings in such easy, casual fashion. The answer seemed to startle Shizuru, too; her eyes widened and lips parted just a little. I was mentally kicking myself for passing judgment on people I'd never met and in a way that would be hurtful to Shizuru besides when, unaccountably, she smiled. Unlike her usual mysteries, though, she explained this one right away.

"_Ookini_, Natsuki," she said, the use of her Kyoto dialect of Japanese signaling her sincerity. Not that she couldn't be sincere in English, too, just that she _always_ was when she slipped into Japanese phrases. "Thank you for your honesty, and for not dismissing my feelings with platitudes."

The sudden intensity in her voice was too much for me to deal with just then, so I deflected her with a snort.

"Like I ever speak in platitudes," I said. "Besides, my father hasn't seen me or even written a letter in fifteen years and he has a hell of a lot less valid reason for doing so than your parents."

"Even so, I appreciate it."

"I..." I started to brush her thanks aside again, then gave it up. "Look, I think we both learned our lesson last time about what goes wrong when we hold back with each other. Now that we have a second chance, I...well, if there are going to be any mistakes, they can happen on the other side, from too much honesty." I tried to lighten things a bit with a smile. "Besides, it saves me the trouble of thinking up something fancy to dance around the point with."

As a distraction, the humor only partially worked. Shizuru did smile, but was only slightly put off the scent.

"Well, there is a point there. But yes, I also wish to be sure that we do not repeat past mistakes. I will not allow myself to become the person who so frightened you. Never again."

_What am I supposed to say to that?_

But then, maybe it wasn't necessary to say anything. Maybe all I had to do was accept the vow for what it was.

I nodded once, slowly.

"A-anyway," I said, "you were talking about the killer's handwriting and how it shows she's a woman?"

"Well, it's more that it _confirms_ that she is a woman, since I—"

She was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Yes? What is it?" Shizuru called. There was no answer, at least not spoken. Instead, a piece of paper was pushed under the door. She got up and picked it up.

"What does it say?"

"'Come down to 161A,' that is all."

"161A? Is that the landlady's flat? What does she want with you?"

"I don't know. The note is in her hand, but I cannot see why she would not just come up here."

"Particularly since she had to deliver the note."

"Well, she may have sent someone else to do that, but even so, I do not like it. I noticed that you have replaced your derringer sometime during the past months; I suggest you have it in hand when we answer this invitation."

"You intend to go down, then?"

"Certainly. If it means a trap, then the only alternative would be to leave the building by way of the windows, since the person is already within. Natsuki, I think, could do so with a reasonable expectation of safety, but I am neither trained in nor dressed for such acrobatics."

"So we accept the invitation."

I took the derringer from my vest pocket, unclipped it from the watch-chain, and palmed it so I could fire in an instant if need be. I stood up.

"All right, then. Let's go."

We went to the door. She unlocked it and looked out onto the landing. No thugs crashed into the room, no gunmen fired up the stairs in ambush. Then again, I don't think either one of us was expecting that kind of brute-force response. If that was the objective, it would have been more sensible to just smash down the door and attack or lurk in the stairwell for us to emerge; the business with the note only put us on our guard.

No, if there was an ambush, it would be set in the landlady's rooms, the note an invitation to the killing ground.

The door to 161A was a couple of inches ajar, we saw when we reached the landing above the ground floor. We shared a quick glance. Did we go in, or did we reject the invitation and keep on going out the door?

"'Come into my parlor,'" I murmured. That kind of caution, however, didn't stop either one of us. Perhaps foolishly, I let Shizuru push the door open all the way and followed her inside.

The landlady's rooms were scarcely less shabby than Shizuru's, although they held more clutter. A threadbare rug of faux-Persian design tried to add color but just seemed tawdry, and three gin bottles in various stages of fullness suggested that there was a reason for the overall look of decay.

"Ah, do come in, ladies," a feminine voice came from the direction of a door in the right-hand wall. It led to a short hall; we went past the bedroom on our left and to the door at the far end, which took us into a kitchen that smelled heavily of overcooked ham and day-old cabbage. There was a wooden table with two chairs; the slatternly woman I'd seen on the way into the building was seated in one—or at least, she was fixed in that position by two ropes running around her torso. Her head lolled to one side, her eyes were closed, her henna-red hair loose and tousled around her shoulders.

The edge of what looked like a carving knife was pressed to her throat.

I stared at the woman holding the knife.

"I'm so glad you could come!" she said. "It's so difficult to arrange a proper conversation under these circumstances. Shared history can build intimacy, but make it so hard to make for a polite talk."

"Tomoe Marguerite!" I yelped. "But you're _dead_! I saw Kanzaki shoot you!"

The young woman's gaze narrowed, her face twisting into an expression of hatred. "And I'll settle things with him soon enough, once I'm done with you." Suddenly, the expression brightened, to be replaced by one of sunny innocence. "But then again, he only did what I'd have done in his place. If I knew someone was going to kill me, I would certainly stab her in the back as soon as possible."

Tomoe's lightning change in expression and tone of voice told me that her mental state was no better—perhaps worse—than it had been when I'd encountered her before. Of course, we hadn't _known_ one another then; the only conversation we'd had was when, as an assassin of the Obsidian Court, she'd tried to kill me. She'd almost succeeded in ambushing me, only failing because Reito Kanzaki had gotten her to stage the ambush at a place significant to my past so I was more suspicious, more alert than usual. It had been a close thing, though, and the injuries I'd taken in the ambush had been enough to slow me down so that I'd lost the ensuing fight to her. Or maybe I'd have lost anyway; who knew? Kanzaki had saved my life, putting two bullets through her back.

"Apparently bad marksmanship is one more reason I have to dislike him," I muttered. "You didn't die; you just swam away in the dark."

"What was I to do? I was badly injured, unarmed, and outnumbered two to one. I crept away, slipped out of the water a couple of piers away, staunched the bleeding as best I could, and got to a doctor I knew in the area. He cleaned the wounds properly so they didn't go septic from the filth in the river." She shuddered. "I went to the Obsidian Prince's home to heal in safety, so I could get another chance at you—except that you came for him the very next night, the both of you."

"You—you were _in the house_ that night?"

"I was in the hall outside the library! I'd come downstairs when I heard a sound. I found the man who was supposed to be guarding the door stabbed to death, and I heard you having your talk with the Obsidian Prince. I didn't know whether to try and protect him or avoid the risk..."

She shuddered, her hands trembling, and I saw a fleck of blood well up where the knife had nicked her prisoner. Then her face transformed again, taking on an almost beatific look.

"And then I saw Shizuru-_oneesama_ for the first time!"

My Japanese was by no means as good as Shizuru's, but even I knew that using "older sister" as an honorific was ferociously inappropriate under the circumstances. It didn't have to be literal, of course, as a girl could use _oneesama_ towards an older girl who was a respected or admired senior, but these two hadn't even met.

"You were so magnificent, Shizuru-_oneesama_!" she rhapsodized. "How you stood there, splashed in the blood of your enemies! How you told the stories of how you murdered the three Elders so perfectly, without leaving any evidence pointing to you! How you dispatched the Obsidian Prince without hesitation or error! It was so amazing!"

My gut twisted in horror. I could remember every moment of that encounter like it was etched in stone—not just the events, but the shock and fear they'd inspired. And Tomoe...she'd _liked _what she'd seen? She'd found a half-insane, murderous Shizuru _attractive_?

She licked her lips.

"I knew, I knew, I knew I had to make you mine. But I couldn't stay because of the fire, so I ran from the house." She licked her lips again. "I think you chased me, Shizuru-_oneesama. _I so wanted to let you catch me. But I was too weak. I'd reopened my wounds getting out of the house. So I went to ground. I hid. And you'd gone from me by the time I was recovering!"

Tomoe pouted, her look petulant, like a child who didn't get her way. Even in the dingy kitchen, where the light through the grime-smeared windows had an aqueous quality that seemed to give her dark hair a greenish sheen, I could tell that she was younger than I'd originally believed. I'd thought she was my age or even, perhaps, older, in her early twenties. But now, seeing her in the daytime, I realized that she couldn't be more than seventeen or so. How early had her criminal career begun, I wondered, if she'd been an accomplished enough assassin to catch the eye of the Obsidian Court, for the Obsidian Prince to want to make her his Herald?

"When I was healthy again, I started to look for you," she told Shizuru. "I knew we would be perfect together! You could show me, teach me things _she_," she hissed at me, "would scream and run from like she did that day. But I could not find you! I heard a whisper here, a rumor there, but you had vanished. Shizuru-_oneesama_ was as brilliant in this art as everything else."

She smiled then, a self-indulgent, almost unholy expression.

"So I decided to lure you out! I knew that even though she was so stupid and cruel as to have rejected you, your loving heart must still bleed for this Natsuki Kuga. I knew that if she were threatened, you would come to save her. So I used that stupid pustule Adair. I even talked him into letting me kill him so we could have Kuga hung. Of course, that was all just to put Kuga in enough danger that you would show yourself, Shizuru-_oneesama_. I wouldn't let the law take this woman who had hurt you so much. I'll deal with her myself! Then you can have someone who truly loves you forever by your side, someone who is not afraid of your true self."

"Or we could just have Haruka Armitage arrest you for Adair's murder. You confessed before two witnesses and your handwriting matches the forgeries you sent to Mlle. Hélène when you bought the air-gun."

"You see, Shizuru-_oneesama_, how cruel she is? How she would have me tell the police everything I know about the murders of Baron Maupertuis, Robert Merridew, and the Obsidian Prince with his men?" Tomoe stared at Shizuru with wide, pleading eyes, and I found myself wondering if she was mad enough that she genuinely didn't see the incongruity between claiming to love Shizuru and blackmailing her to keep us from having Tomoe arrested.

"Or I could just shoot you. Believe me, I have much better aim than Kanzaki." I pointed the derringer at her.

"With that little toy? You'd have to kill me instantly, you know, not if you don't want dear Mrs. Turner here to have a second bright red smile. Just now she's only having a nice nap, thanks to the doped gin I gave her, so that we could have this chat. Do you want to risk an innocent woman's life just to try to murder me, Kuga?"

_Damn!_

"I didn't think so," she said contemptuously, as if she'd have had more respect if I'd tried to gun her down and to hell with the landlady's life. "Now back up, out of the apartment and into the front foyer. I don't want you shooting me in the back as I move, Kuga."

"We'll do as you say," Shizuru said. "Just...just don't hurt Mrs. Turner."

"Of course not!" Tomoe said, hurt in her eyes. "I would never break my word to you, Shizuru-_oneesama_."

We backed away slowly; I knew that at least before her injury she had been a deadly knife-thrower so I did not take my eyes off her or lower my gun, wishing as I did that I had one of my revolvers and not the tiny derringer in my hand. Firing from more than ten or twenty feet away with it would be quite a hit-or-miss proposition. Thankfully, it wasn't required; Tomoe did not move until we were out of her line of sight. Almost as soon as we got into the front hall of the building, we heard a door bang.

"The kitchen has a back door," Shizuru said. "It leads out into an alley which runs up into the street on the far side of the block."

"Bloody hell, we'll never catch her that way."

We rushed back into the apartment. Shizuru bent over Mrs. Turner while I flung open the kitchen door and looked out into the alley, but Tomoe was gone, maybe up into the street like Shizuru had said and maybe into one of the other buildings whose doors backed onto the alley. I slammed the door shut with a curse while stepping back into the kitchen.

"Is she all right, Shizuru?"

"Yes; mixing sedatives with alcohol can be a difficult business, but it seems that Miss Marguerite knew her dosage."

"Or got lucky. Let's cut her loose and put her on the couch in the other room."

"All right." She picked up the knife Tomoe had left on the table, cut the ropes, and thrust the blade away like it was somehow poisonous just from Tomoe's touch, flinging it back on the table. I caught the unconscious landlady as she started to sag out of the chair. Between us, we carried her into the sitting-room and got her settled on a badly worn, red-upholstered settee.

"She'll probably wake up thinking she just got really drunk," I said, "and that Tomoe left when she passed out." I snapped my fingers. "Can you find the doped gin bottle? We shouldn't leave it around or she might accidentally poison herself."

Shizuru nodded.

"It would be the freshest one," she said, and examined the open bottles, soon identifying the one in question. She glanced from the bottle down to the recumbent form of her landlady. There was no trace of a smile on her face, and there hadn't been since we'd first walked into the kitchen. "Thank God she wasn't killed or seriously hurt," she said softly, a catch in her voice.

She had a strange numbness about her that bothered me. It wasn't like in the past where she'd been concealing her emotions; the blank expression wasn't a mask or facade, it was just...empty. Shock, surprise, the brain's inability to focus properly in the face of what it saw.

I'd probably had pretty much the same expression myself when Shizuru had made all her revelations to me. She looked like I'd felt, anyway.

"Come on, Shizuru. There's nothing more to be done here. Let's go."

"Go? Go where?"

I took a deep breath.

"Home."

~X X X~

_A/N: The St. Clair disappearance is, of course, "The Man With The Twisted Lip." The landlady's name is also taken from the Holmes stories, where Mrs. Turner is a relative of Mrs. Hudson's who comes to take care of her when she is sick. Midori will be glad to know that this one, however, is no relation._

_As for the identity of 'M' (which stands for Marguerite, of course, but which more perceptive readers will have immediately realized is also short for Moran), I probably surprised nobody, here. Honestly, there were really only two genuine candidates in the EMDN series for the role of Colonel Sebastian Moran, Tomoe and Reito, so on pure random chance you had a 50/50 shot at it, and, well, Tomoe was a lot more likely. So I hope that the lack of an effective Dramatic Reveal here was made up for by the tension and excitement of the confrontation between Shizlock, Watsuki, and Tomoran..._

_By the way, please don't interpret Natsuki's leprechaun comment as being a hint that the history of that folk-tale was carefully traced or anything. She was just wising off, really! ^_^_


	6. Chapter 6

Shizuru was in no shape to pack, and besides which it wasn't like she needed any of her things, as everything she'd left behind her six months ago was all still in our Baker Street rooms.

_"Our" rooms_, I thought. They'd been "mine" now for nearly as long as they'd ever been "ours," and yet they'd never felt like anything _but_ "ours." Not my home, but Shizuru's and mine, from which she'd been missing.

I'd as good as said as much to her face when I'd said, "Let's go home." I wondered if she'd even noticed, though, given her state. It wasn't like her at all to be like that, numbly moving at my direction. We waited only so long as it took me to dump the drugged gin down the kitchen drain, then run up and grab the letters and Shizuru's notes on the handwriting from the garret; we hailed a cab and made our way back to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline when she opened the door to us.

"I should have guessed that if you finally came back it would be at tea-time." I checked my watch and found that it was quarter past four.

"We could use some, thank you."

"English or Japanese?"

I put my hand on Shizuru's shoulder.

"Japanese, I think."

Mrs. Hudson nodded.

"Anything else?"

"I'd draw the blinds and close the shutters," I said. "It turns out Adair's murderer was after us the whole time, as an elaborate trap."

The Scotswoman just sighed.

"So what else is new? Try not to make it too long this time." She was about to go back into 221A, then turned back. "Shizuru, you owe me six months' back rent."

I couldn't help myself; I laughed. Shizuru blinked in surprise, then smiled for the first time in an hour.

"Of course. It may take a week or so, as things are a bit at sixes and sevens just now."

"As I said, so what's new?" She winked at us, and we went upstairs. I went into the sitting room but Shizuru paused at the threshold, looking around.

"It's...everything's the same."

"Well, the desk is more cluttered since you weren't here to clean it up, but..."

"Natsuki will always be Natsuki." She walked slowly to the door of what had been her bedroom and pushed it open. "Everything...it's like I've never left."

"I didn't want to touch anything of yours. Mrs. Hudson dusts once in a while."

"But...if you thought that I was dead, why leave things as they are?"

I pulled the blinds so that Tomoe couldn't snipe into the room. Mrs. Hudson was right; I'd been doing the same thing six months ago as part of a more generalized fear of the Obsidian Court's assassins. Now that I _knew_ Tomoe had the means and skill to fire the Von Herder into the room from some vantage point, it just made it all the more important to take precautions. Who knew what she'd do next?

"I...I don't really know. Maybe I couldn't just admit to myself that you were gone. Hell, look at how long the Queen's been in mourning."

"I suppose that Mrs. Hudson appreciated it, too, since she did not push to clear out my things and get a new lodger, and clearly she did not increase your rent to the whole amount for the lodgings."

"I don't know what I'd have done without her. Mai, too, of course, but Mai didn't really know you, plus she's got her own problems what with Kanzaki's reunion with Mikoto and her own brother getting married this past June. Of course," I tried to lighten the mood, "I figure in another couple of months she'd have cashed in the stuff you left behind to pay the rent. That Kyoto tea set of yours would go a long way on the collector's market."

She didn't answer, not even that little half-giggle, half-chuckle laugh of hers. I turned around and realized that my attempt at a joke had fallen very flat. She wasn't smiling; she didn't even have that blank look like she had had after the encounter with Tomoe. She looked..._stricken_.

"I didn't _mean_ it, Shizuru. No one was really going to sell your tea set." I hadn't realized it had sentimental meaning to her; maybe it had been her mother's or something? But she shook her head at once at my apology.

"No...no, Natsuki, don't say that you're _sorry_. That just makes it worse."

"What does it make worse?" I asked. I was probably being oblivious again, but I truly did not understand what she was talking about.

"Everything! Your feelings, this case, Tomoe Marguerite. This...this is all my fault."

"How do you figure?" I said foolishly. It wasn't really a question, more of a rhetorical denial of her claim, but she was ready to answer it. She'd said almost nothing while we confronted Tomoe in Mrs. Turner's kitchen, and I was now informed that it was because she was listening and thinking about what she'd heard.

"It's my fault that she's coming after you. If I'd had the courage to face up to my feelings, or to have any sensitivity about yours, I'd have never left and she would not be playing games with you now."

I supposed that there was some justice to that, but...

"Shizuru, that woman was trying to kill me six months ago while you were still just a name to her. She'd probably have tried to come after me anyway because I got away from her once and her ego couldn't take it. Not to mention Kanzaki, and what that could have meant for Mai and Mikoto if she hadn't been so focused on us first."

"It's my fault that innocent people were victimized as part of her scheme to get at me," she went on without missing a beat.

"Mrs. Turner will be fine. She just got a harmless nick on her neck and slept through the whole thing. Yvette Hélène isn't maudlin enough to blame herself because a lunatic bought a gun from her and shot someone. And if you expect me to weep over the oh-so-Honorable Ronald Adair, you're going to have to wait a really long time."

"It's my fault that I let myself become something that that sadistic monster saw as her ideal woman!" she all but shouted at me. "Look at what I made of myself! How are the things I did for your sake any different than what _she_ is doing for mine right now? That...that _thing_ is what I became, while claiming it was for love's sake."

"Stop it!" I snapped. "Don't talk like that!"

"Why should I not? It is the truth." She buried her face in her hands, weeping openly.

"I said, stop it!" I repeated, crossing to her in quick strides. Before I even knew what I was doing, I grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands apart. "Look at me." She didn't respond at once, so I snapped, "Look at me, Shizuru!"

She raised her eyes to mine; they were wet with tears.

"You are _nothing_ like her," I said slowly and firmly. "Yes, you did awful things. That's a fact you can't run away from. But you are _not_ the same, and it's only because she's as mad as a hatter that she can't recognize that. Tomoe Marguerite _likes_ to hurt people. You know it yourself from the Wilton murder, from my fight with her six months ago, and from the encounter we just had, both from how she carried it out and what she said. She's a murderer for pay who'll hurt or kill anyone from a vicious criminal to a complete innocent, from an enemy to a causal bystander. You _know_ that, Shizuru, just like you know that the people _you_ killed were all criminals, most or all of whom the law would send to the gallows if it had all the facts. Just like you know that you wouldn't have done _any_ of it if not for the fact that I was in danger. Yes, it was a twisted and distorted kind of love, but you did it all to protect me—probably, without it, I'd be dead today. _She's_ doing this all to _possess_ you, not to help you. You rejected her and she started planning more murders, while when I pushed you away, _you _just did as I asked.

"So don't just stand there and compare yourself to her. You may have been twisted up inside and driven half-mad by your love, but it _was_ love. Tomoe is just trying to take you out of her own selfish lust and avarice. You don't think I can tell the difference? Do you think I'd have missed you for six months like my heart was cut out of my chest if I didn't know that your love was real?"

Shizuru trembled like a captive bird in my grip and I got the eerie sensation that it was _she_ who was trying to look away from _my_ gaze but found herself trapped. The problem with starting out in the light was when one falls, the darkness looks like one solid black pit, but those of us who have been there all along know that there are shades and gradations in the shadows.

Maybe that was what had struck Tomoe so deeply about her. It was the purity with which Shizuru had committed even unforgivable acts. Even her evil had had that selflessness about it, done not for gain but entirely for my benefit, with no hope of taking me for herself.

"Natsuki," she said in a small voice, "it's never that simple."

"Yes," I said, "sometimes it really is."

And then I kissed her.

Her lips were cold from the quick, frightened breaths she'd been taking while I'd been delivering my speech, but they warmed quickly. For a moment, it was the reverse of the kiss she had given me in the Obsidian Prince's library, as she did not react, seemingly frozen. For a moment.

Then she was kissing me back with an urgency, a passion that was almost explosive. Warmth seemed to flood her mouth, not only from my own but from inside herself. Her hands slipped from mine, closed around my back, and pressed me up against her. My head tipped back as she deepened the kiss, pressing on with what I had begun, and I embraced her, too, one hand at the small of her back and the other sliding into her hair, pulling it free of its pins so that it tumbled down around her shoulders and I could feel the silken cascade over my skin. A fire seemed to have been lit within me; a heat seemed to spread out from my lower abdomen, filling me. My lips opened beneath hers and I sighed into her mouth, a long, ragged groan that came from deep within.

Shizuru broke off the kiss for a moment. Her eyes were alight with something more than just desire, something that threatened to pull me in, to consume me.

"Natsuki..." she murmured. "So kind that it hurts..."

"It isn't kindness," I told her, "to take what I want." I pulled her mouth back to mine and with that act shattered the last bonds of her self-control. A dull, growling noise came from the back of her throat and she deepened the kiss, her mouth moving wetly on mine, and I tasted her breath through her open lips. Her hands slid down my back, cupping my bottom through my trousers, and pulled me hard against her; I could feel the heat of her even through our clothes. It took me by surprise at first when her tongue slid into my mouth, a gentle invasion probing, tasting, but then I moaned against her, returning the caress, our mouths exploring one another.

I had no idea how we got across the room, let alone how we found ourselves sprawled on my bed with her atop me. All I was aware of was the desperate, aching need for her that drove my mouth, my hands like it would consume me if I didn't fill my senses with Shizuru in every way I could. She'd gotten my cravat and collar off somewhere along the line, and pressed nibbling, biting kisses along the length of my neck, drawing shuddering moans from me.

"Ah! Shizuru..."

Her fingers began to work at the buttons of my shirt, but they were trembling so much she could barely work them through the holes and more than one was torn off accidentally. She began to pull the lacy silk camisole up, then stopped and lifted her head, apprehension merging with smoldering desire in her eyes.

"Natsuki..." she made herself say. "Is this...is this really what you want? You're not...for my sake?"

I thought it was so endearing how she stumbled over her words. No surprise, that: _she_ had known how she felt for months on end. _She_ had longed for this for who knew how many days, how many nights? If what I was feeling, the terrible, clawing ache for her, the need to touch and be touched, was what she had felt time and again, I was amazed that she could bring herself to stop at all.

But she had, and my heart almost melted from that alone.

I cupped the side of her face in my palm, and despite my own nerves, my own passions, I found the words to tell her.

"I love you, Shizuru. I'm sorry it took so long for me to know it. I'm not good with things like this. I cut myself off from it for so long that I didn't even understand what love was until you showed me, day by day, and even then I was so ignorant that I couldn't tell what it was that I was feeling. But I do know it, now, at last, and this is exactly what I want."

Then, because I thought I would go mad if I had to wait one moment more without touching her, I wrapped my thigh around hers and pulled her down on top of me while I crushed our lips together once again.

~X X X~

It was a long time after that. The room had grown dark with the sunset and my bare skin was growing cold except where it was pressed up against Shizuru's. She lay with her body half-covering mine, head tucked up under my chin, her arm embracing me just beneath my breasts.

"I could die right now without a single regret," she murmured, her breath gently tickling my skin.

"I'd have regrets," I said, the hand I had wrapped around her lazily tracing circles on her bare back. "I'd regret every day in the future we haven't spent together yet."

"Oh, _Natsuki_..." she sighed, then smiled and playfully teased my collarbone between her teeth. "For someone who said she knew nothing about love, you do very well at it."

I blushed, recalling our fumbling caresses, how more than once she'd had to gently guide my fingers to the right spot or wordlessly show me what did or didn't feel good for her. "It'll..._I'll_ get better, I promise," I stammered. It made Shizuru laugh.

"Don't be silly, Natsuki; that isn't what I was talking about. And it is not as if I have any comparisons to make."

"I recall one of us having a much better idea of what she was doing."

She raised her head so she could look me in the eyes.

"Natsuki, I have never made love with anyone before tonight. I have been aware of my lesbian inclinations since I was a teenager, yes, and I've shared kisses with other girls in the past. And I was curious about the kind of things two women would do together, so I did research the matter. I even," she admitted with a blush, "went so far as to...try things...on myself where I could. But I've never been with another woman before. I'd never been in love."

There wasn't much that I could say to that.

"Oh," was my brilliant comment, in a very small voice.

"Natsuki?"

"I...Really, I'm your first love?"

Shizuru smiled impishly.

"_Ara_, was Natsuki jealous of the previous lovers I did not have?"

I could only hope that the dim lighting was hiding the full extent of my blushing.

"I...just didn't want to disappoint you," I muttered.

"Natsuki, making love with you was a dream come true. It was about being with you, about you welcoming me into an intimacy that we've never before shared, about you loving me enough to offer me something that you have never offered anyone before. After the things that have happened between us, can you imagine how that makes me feel? None of this was in any way about technical proficiency, Natsuki."

The warmth that flooded me was not entirely from the heat of my flushed skin this time.

"Thank you, Shizuru. I wasn't really thinking about that stuff while we were actually together, but afterwards..." I couldn't, it seemed, get over running squarely into embarrassing topics. "I wanted this to be everything you hoped it would be," I said in a very small voice, "and you made me feel such amazing things, and, well, I didn't want you to be left out."

"Ahh," she said, understanding. "Well, you needn't be embarrassed on that score." She arched forward and kissed me softly. "Although, if Natsuki ever wishes to practice diligently to improve herself I will be more than willing to assist in your training."

I closed my arms around her waist.

"You'd better be, because I'm sure as hell not going to let anyone else take the part!" We shared another long, warm kiss, then regretfully untangled ourselves from one another and sat up. I slid from the bed and turned up the gaslight so we could see to get dressed. When I turned around, I saw that Shizuru was staring at me.

"You look like you want to eat me alive or something."

"Natsuki is very worth looking at, and as I am finally permitted _to _look..."

"Idiot. Would you hand me my camisole?"

"_Ikezu_," she said with a mock pout. She found where the lace-edged silk undergarment had been left on the other side of the bed and handed it to me. "Natsuki, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"I suppose not."

"I would expect you to wear sturdy, utilitarian undergarments. Yet very often you seem to wear ones like these, both very fancy and quite expensive, particularly compared to your outer wardrobe. Why is that?"

I wondered for a second whether or not I should answer, then glanced at Shizuru sitting, still naked, on the bed and decided that it was hardly the time to be keeping back minor secrets.

"Wearing fancy lingerie makes me feel like I'm a woman," I confessed. She didn't react at once, so I went on. "I've spent most of my life dressed in masculine clothing, carrying out dangerous business most often left to men. Most of the time, I figure that it's just the way things are, but sometimes it makes me feel...I suppose that you could say 'unfeminine.' So I wear pretty, lacy underthings because I can wear them regardless of whether I have on jeans, trousers, or a dress. I suppose that sounds like a silly reason."

Shizuru shook her head twice, slowly.

"No, it does not. I must say, though, that I have never thought of you as masculine, Natsuki, but always as an amazing and unique woman." She smiled at me. "Believe me that if I had found you _manly_, I would not be in this particular state just now."

"Thank you."

"I do envy you in one respect, though. It is much easier for you to dress than I."

"Well, a lot of ladies' outfits are created with the assumption that the wearer has a maid to help them dress."

"Indeed so."

We sort of ran out of things to say at that point. The warmth and intimacy of our lovemaking had worn off for the most part, and with that had come the realization that we were there, naked and exposed in a room with each other. Maybe some day things would reach a point where we could be casual about such matters at all times, when the connection between us and comfort with one another had been built so strongly. That time wasn't today, though, and we found our self-consciousness growing. Was this the way it was with most women when they first took a lover?

_Lovers_. That was what we were now, I thought. There was no turning back from that reality. The step was irrevocable: the relationship might or might not remain the same in the future, but the fact of it was something that could not change. How strange was it that I'd been the one to take the final step, to decide to cross that line, and now I was feeling...what? Maidenly shyness? The idea made me want to gag.

Because I did love Shizuru, and I _was_ attracted to her, woman to woman, and I wasn't stupid enough to have regrets over doing something that both of us wanted to happen and were ready to have happen. More than that, I thought, it needed to happen, because I doubted that there was any other way for me to make the point to Shizuru and as long as we'd been stuck there we'd never make any headway between us at all.

I wondered if, for a while, I'd made _her_ feel like a princess for a change.

These thoughts occupied the rest of the time it had taken me to get dressed. I fastened my belt and turned around to see that Shizuru had put her underclothes on but had the maid's dress and petticoats folded over her arm instead of having put them on.

"If you need help, I'll hook the back up for you," I told her," remembering what we'd said about clothing styles.

"No, thank you; I believe that I shall take your suggestion from before and change into one of the kimono I left here."

"All right."

I put my hand on the doorknob and then slowly, as if recognizing that something was about to change, that the idyll between us was ending and we had to return to the real world, I turned it and proceeded Shizuru back into the sitting room.

The tea tray which both of us had forgotten lay sitting on the low table in front of the sofa. Mrs. Hudson must have brought it in while we were in my bedroom. A bit of white caught my eye; a folded slip of paper from my memo pad was sitting on the tray. I picked it up.

"What does it say?"

I unfolded the note, then rolled my eyes.

"'It's about time.'"

Shizuru giggled.

"It seems that Natsuki's decision to alter our relationship meets with our landlady's approval, at least."

I groaned.

"Next time, remind me to lock the door," I said, trying and failing to not think about what Mrs. Hudson might have heard.

"Still, I am very pleased, and surprised, that she should condone a homosexual relationship so freely. Many people would not be so accepting."

"Which brings us to someone who is definitely not accepting of our relationship."

Shizuru nodded.

"Miss Marguerite. Whom in an odd way I need to thank, as it was because of her that I came back to London in the first place."


	7. Chapter 7

"For her? You mean, you knew about Tomoe before the incident at Mrs. Turner's? So what the hell was all that about comparing handwriting to verify who was responsible if you already knew about who 'M' was and what they were up to? Why did you string me along?"

Shizuru's statement had surprised me, but in retrospect it really shouldn't have. She'd already told me that she hadn't been watching or keeping track of me, which I believed. But if that was the case, then she could only have become involved with this business from the other end.

Her eyes widened.

"Natsuki, I didn't—"

"We've been through this before, _as you may recall_," I snapped out. "It's one thing when you're playing Master Detective and won't reveal the truth behind a case until you can have your big, theatrical denouement scene. It's another when we're talking about a woman who had personally tried to kill me twice, whom I believed was safely dead!"

"I was going to tell you, Natsuki, right when I got in your cab, but things...did not go as I expected."

"By which you mean I fainted at your feet and then we got into a huge fight over the past. And then we had to talk to Mlle. Hélène, which took more time. But why not after that, on the way to Soho or at your flat there?"

Shizuru shivered.

"I wanted to finish the handwriting analysis first, so that I could give you the complete case to that point. Only we were interrupted by Miss Marguerite, and then..."

I let out my breath with a sigh.

"And then things got even more out of hand," I said, "right up to and including the point where this conversation can be called a lovers' spat instead of an argument."

Shizuru nodded.

"Nor, truthfully, do I know as much as you seem to think. I was not even certain that it was Miss Marguerite. I had never seen her clearly the way you had, and after the story you told about her fight with you and how she was shot by Reito I had no reason to suspect that she was still alive."

"Then what _did_ you know?"

"...May I get dressed first?"

I winced.

"Yes, of course..."

She slipped into her bedroom, and I dropped into one of the client chairs opposite the sofa.

"What the bloody hell are you doing, Natsuki?" I muttered under my breath. "Standing there growling at her while she's in her underwear, for God's sake? What kind of complete ass am I?"

It was obvious that the shock and horror of six months ago, and the pain of the intervening time, weren't just magically wiped out by a couple of conversations and a romp in bed. I'd given Shizuru my trust, far more of it than I'd ever offered anyone else in my life, and she'd violated it. She'd done it for basically good reasons, out of concern for me, just like when she'd been driven over the edge to kill it had also been for my sake. But the reasons didn't change the facts. She _had_ violated my trust, taken more of it than I'd offered, and the experience had left me ready to pounce at any sign that it was happening again.

I'd faced up to the fact that I _loved_ her, but as for trust, well, rebuilding that would take a little longer. Or maybe a lot longer. Shizuru's whole personality was about mysteries and secrets, after all. That didn't translate well to the kind of candor that went along with building trust.

"I thought love and trust were supposed to go hand in hand," I muttered while pouring myself a cup of cold tea.

"I never betrayed your love, so that would be easier to accept."

I nearly spilled my tea; she'd come silently out of the bedroom, dressed in a lavender kimono with plum-blossom designs. I took a sip and wished I'd spilled it; the tea was exceptionally bitter. Which shouldn't have been a surprise, given how long it had been steeping in the pot.

"I'm sorry for snapping at you before hearing all the facts," I said. "You didn't deserve that."

"Perhaps not this time, but one cannot say that was always the case," she replied generously. "After all that happened between us, it is certainly not unfair for you to anticipate a...lack of candor from me. Particularly since when I returned to London we had _not_ repaired our relationship in any way and I had no expectation of doing so, so that it would only be natural for me to take independent action."

I shook my head.

"Maybe, but I still shouldn't have accused you."

"I have not exactly given Na—given you—a reason to believe me."

Her latest near-slip over the use of the third person made me think; I found myself leaning forward and peering closer at her.

"I forget, sometimes, that you're almost as private a person by nature as I am. You cover it up with a pretty smile and polite words, but that's just your way of keeping your secrets to yourself."

"Whereas Natsuki," she said with a smile, "protects her borders by boldly warning off anyone who comes near them."

I forgave her the "Natsuki" that time; like I'd told her, my objection was to her hiding behind it to pull away from me, not to her teasing. Which wasn't to say that the teasing didn't bother me too, sometimes, but that was just who she was. And in a weird, backhanded way I liked her teasing. It meant that she was comfortable enough around me to drop the pretty mask I'd just mentioned and be herself.

"True, but it all adds up to the same thing." I ran my hand through my hair. "It's something we both need to work on changing, if we're really going to be lovers, or, hell, even friends. Because you're right, my nerves are rubbed raw by what you did before, and it's going to make me even more short-tempered than usual." I grinned and added, "If that's even possible. So I hope you'll try to bear with me?"

I extended a hand to her and she took it and squeezed.

"I would be a very great hypocrite if I did not, my dearest Natsuki."

"Thank you. I'm glad, because I really, really don't want to lose you again, Shizuru."

Her face lit up when I said that; there was nothing hidden about her feelings this time.

"Then...towards that end, I'll tell you everything I know about this affair, and we can then try to figure out some kind of plan to deal with Tomoe." She looked down at the tea tray and frowned. "I had better make us a fresh pot of tea."

"Everything is all where it used to be," I told her.

"Thank you."

She got out her personal tea set and the little spirit-stove she'd used to prepare tea for herself in the old days when it was late at night and she did not want to bother Mrs. Hudson. It wasn't late by any means now, but I got the impression that she did not want to bring anyone else in but the two of us.

I knew that Shizuru was a practitioner of the Japanese tea ceremony. That was something of which I myself had little knowledge, so I did not know whether the graceful, precise movements and the way her entire being seemed focused on the task before her were actually the practice of the _chanoyu_ or was just her "making tea." I did know, though, that the way she handled the water, the powdered green tea, the whisk, and the pot were strangely fascinating, and I simply sat and watched her without saying a word until she was sitting on the sofa facing me with cups in our hands. I sipped, and for just a moment it seemed like I could taste the essence of forested mountain slopes I had never seen along with the strong green tea.

I let the spell linger for several seconds before I said, "It's not coffee, but it'll do." Shizuru burst into giggles, as I'd intended.

"Given her preference for that noxious brew, it is good to know that Natsuki has bad habits as well."

"You know, you're half Venetian. You ought to be looking for a nice _cafe latte_ once in a while."

"As Natsuki, being half German, no doubt seeks out fine beer?"

I pulled a face. "All right, you do have a point, there."

She smiled at me.

"I thought you would think so."

The smile vanished, and she leaned towards me, cradling the teacup between her hands.

"I told you that I never meant you to think that I was dead, though as I said this morning, I now realize why you came to that conclusion based upon what I said and did. The fact is, however, that when I referred to the incident as an 'ending' I did not mean of my life but only of our time together. I intended to leave England and reestablish my practice somewhere else, perhaps in Italy, perhaps in America, perhaps even Russia."

I nodded.

"But you said that you had one more act to perform, and then you ran into the flames."

She shuddered.

"I meant that I had...one more witness to silence."

A sudden, dark look came across her face, a kind of sick hopelessness in it.

"Do you realize what it's like," she said in a voice barely above a whisper, "to look back into your memories and recall your own mind thinking things that are absolutely insane, and how at the time you believed they were utterly reasonable? I've woken up screaming so many times since then, like I was a little girl dreaming of monsters, only the monster in the dream was me. When you said that I wasn't like Tomoe perhaps you were right—I pray that you are right—but even if so, I know how close I was to becoming like her. In those dreams I didn't just relive what I had done but I went further, much further...and it taught me how easy it would have been to have let my madness turn on you as well. Had events played out in a slightly different way, who knows how far I might have fallen?"

Shizuru shuddered again, the horror she felt at her own actions plain to see.

"If we're going to play 'what might have been,' if I'd asked the help of the best detective in London in catching a criminal secret society, the Obsidian Prince and the Elders might all be serving long prison terms for their involvement in their diverse financial swindles. I'm not a complicated person, Shizuru, so let's just stick with the plain facts of what _actually_ happened, all right?"

She smiled faintly at me.

"On the contrary, you are a very complicated person, my dearest Natsuki."

Shizuru sipped tea to reorder her thoughts.

"But you are correct; with Tomoe loose there is no time to be engaging in recriminations and hypothetical scenarios. As you say, I had realized that we were being watched, as I had closed that door when I entered the library and yet noticed that it had come open just a crack. The story she told was likely true, that upon finding the guard whom I had killed to gain entry to the library, she opened the door cautiously and silently and spied on what transpired. So I went after her—not knowing at the time that it _was_ her. I caught only a glimpse of her in the house, but the fire separated us so that I could not pursue her and was forced to concentrate on my own escape.

"For the next few days I was in an agony of fear. I watched the papers for any hint that the watcher had gone to the police. I was ready to come forward and confess everything, but nothing occurred. I knew that you would never pay blackmail, so that was not my worry, but I was afraid that you might refuse and the blackmailer would act on his or her threats. But again, nothing. After two weeks of silence, I concluded that the witness had most likely been caught in the fire, and so I proceeded with my plan to leave England."

She sipped her tea again. Strange shadows seemed to flit across her face.

"My return to sanity was not an easy thing. It was as if a veil had been placed over my senses, and I was only then able to clear my thoughts. I traveled: Paris, Monte Carlo, Lausanne, Vienna, Milan, Rome, in addition to visiting my parents at Venice. Paris was first; I have always been closest to Hideo of all my siblings, and I desperately needed to talk to someone I could trust. Among other things, I was afraid that I _needed_ to be incarcerated in a sanitarium for my own safety and that of others; between my homosexuality and my actions in the matter of the Obsidian Court there was clear evidence of lunacy."

"Wait, how does you being a lesbian tie in to insanity?"

"You are aware that many authorities believe that homosexuality is a mental defect?"

I snorted.

"I'd take Mrs. Hudson's opinion over the so-called authorities any day. Though I suppose after today I might be considered somewhat biased on the point."

Shizuru laughed.

"As it happens, Natsuki's opinion is quite the same as Hideo's. He pointed out that we had a perfect example of the lengths to which overwhelming passion can drive a person in our own parents with no need to consider my sexual preference."

She paused, the smile settling back into a serious expression.

"As I said, I traveled at that point, sometimes under an assumed name when I felt particularly in need of privacy, but generally as myself. I even took on the matter of a missing English lady in Switzerland at the request of the hotel manager, who had been receiving worried inquiries from her relations. The criminal was actually caught in England in the act of trying to have his victim buried in another person's coffin."

My eyebrows rose.

"The Holy Peters arrest! I read about that. The press didn't mention you, though."

She nodded.

"I insisted to the Lausanne police that my name be kept out of things, and they were reluctant but happy to accept the credit for my deductions, which they sent to Scotland Yard resulting in Peters's arrest. I must say, though, that realizing that the coffin had a false bottom where the real victim was placed was clever deductive work on Inspector Armitage's part."

"I'll have to save up the fact that it was you who put her on to Peters in the first place for some time when she is really, really getting on my nerves."

"Now, Natsuki, be nice." She paused a moment, then went on. "As it turned out, it was a good thing that I become involved in that matter, because two months ago, when I was visiting my parents outside Venice, word reached me from Prefect Hofmann of the Lausanne police that a woman had been making inquiries about me."

"Tomoe," I stated the obvious.

"Indeed. I of course did not think of her at the time—I had never even met her, and we both believed her dead."

"This whole case is about people _I_ believed were dead. I'm surprised Adair hasn't popped up off the autopsy table yet," I grumbled. It made Shizuru smile, which made me feel a little better.

"Quite so. In any case, while I did not associate this woman with Tomoe Marguerite, I was concerned. As a consulting detective, I have made a number of enemies, and the idea of the missing witness did not escape me, either. The remaining members of the First District were likely to be looking to their personal welfare now that the head of the serpent has been cut off, but it was not impossible that one or two might have designs on revenge and the witness might have gone to such a person."

"So you started investigating the person who was asking about you."

"Exactly."

"I'm guessing that since she gave up and came back to England, she was nowhere near as good at it as you are. Which really isn't surprising; she's an assassin, who stalks and kills known targets. She isn't about investigating and finding an unknown."

"It seems so. Certainly, I was able to pick up her trail and put her under surveillance quite quickly, but she played things very coy, not reporting back to her employer. Now, of course, I realize that this is because she _had_ no employer, and was pursuing me for herself. She traveled under the aliases Margarete Gozen, Thomasine Margery, and Stephanie Langois—allegedly of French, Belgian, and Swiss nationality respectively—and was clearly a native speaker of French although able to feign a variety of dialects. What she did not give away was her ultimate goal."

"Until she came to England and connected with Adair."

Shizuru nodded.

"Unfortunately, her tradecraft was excellent; even I was unable to obtain complete information about her. Mr. Adair was an enigma; he was clearly by his manner and actions not the kind to be the mastermind and the public details of his background bore me out. He did, however, voice quite negative opinions of _you_ on more than one occasion. That terrified me."

"I guess Tomoe's plan was that framing me for killing Adair would have made for headlines in all the major papers, including the international press. You'd be expected to see the headlines and would rush to my rescue. And she'd be watching and waiting, ready to...what, run up to you and confess her love like a schoolgirl?" I cringed; what Shizuru had done was bad enough but at least there was logic behind it: I was under a threat of death and she had eliminated those threatening me. Tomoe had murdered Adair and tried to frame me and drugged and threatened Mrs. Turner just to get Shizuru's _attention_.

No, like I had said to Shizuru, I had no difficulty drawing the line between the two of them.

"Unless we believe that she was lying, and I see no reason to think so."

"I agree. She's obviously crazy, but not intentionally lying. She actually seemed proud of herself for being clever." I paused, thinking things over. "So how is it that you knew she was going to send Adair that letter if you didn't know anything about her plans or that I was involved?"

She shook her head.

"I did not know about the letter. I learned of Mr. Adair's death in the Stop Press in this morning's _Telegraph_."

"Oh?" I started rearranging things in my mind. "So, what, you went there in disguise?"

She nodded.

"Precisely. I wondered at once if there was some connection between Mr. Adair's death and the woman I was investigating. Had there been a falling-out between them? Or had Mr. Adair contacted her because he had an enemy or enemies, and they had acted first? In any case, it was my best lead to the woman, who had gone to ground in the East End and I had not been able to locate her."

"You did say her tradecraft was good," I agreed.

"There was little danger of exposure; the Countess and Lady Hilda would hardly take notice of their servants other than the butler, cook, and their lady's-maids, especially when caught up in their grief. The other servants could be fobbed off with a story of being newly hired, which made the only real danger the butler and housekeeper, who of course would know each member of the staff by name and face. I was, however, able to avoid them, and investigate as best I could, including in Mr. Adair's room, where among other things I verified that he did not possess a pair of the Obsidian Court's distinctive cuff links, so that whatever was happening it did not seem connected to that affair."

"Thankfully. Tomoe Marguerite is enough of a piece of the past for my taste. Which reminds me, Shizuru; when she was looking for you, why didn't you just meet with her? Why all the games stalking her through Europe while she was looking for you?"

"Because it took very little time indeed for me to realize that this woman was extremely dangerous. In Venice she was attacked by a footpad who carried a knife with clear familiarity; in under a minute she had left him with a slashed throat, sinking in the canal. It was not her skill alone which I noted, but her casual ruthlessness and the way she disposed of the body rather than reporting it to the authorities. I thought it best to be very careful with such a woman."

I remembered the ring of steel on steel as I had clashed knife-to-knife with Tomoe. She was most definitely someone to be careful with, both because she was a trained killer and because she took a vicious pleasure in hurting people. No, I didn't blame Shizuru one bit for her patience, particularly when she was investigating for her own sake and not on a client's behalf. With my own lack of patience, I'd probably have forced things and ended up creating a mess that I didn't have to.

"In any event," Shizuru went on, "I also found several letters from the woman we now know as Tomoe to Adair, but they were quite unspecific as to details. What terrified me was that they definitely pointed to their plot being directed at _you_. I knew that I had to take action, but I also knew that I could not go on as I had in the past."

I turned the teacup slowly in my hands.

"Why?" I asked. "I'm not trying to be sarcastic or insulting," I rushed to explain, realizing how my question might sound. "I'm genuinely curious. Six months ago you'd have gone out, hunted down Tomoe, and killed her. What changed this time?"

Shizuru looked me in the eyes, and I saw something in the depths of her gaze, a ghost of her own horror. I thought of what she'd said a few minutes ago, and I remembered how much she'd terrified me in the Obsidian Prince's library.

A monster was frightening enough when it was something in the room with you. How much worse was it, then, when the monster _was_ you, and you were aware of it?

"Never mind," I said. "I...I think I understand."

She smiled with relief, perhaps at not having to explain herself.

"_Ookini. _I found nothing else in Mr. Adair's room, so I decided to check the study, in the hope that the police had missed something of significance. If found there I hoped to pretend that I'd been sent to clean the room—I was sure that the Inspector would have instructed that it be left untouched, but such requests are not always honored, and I doubted that a constable would be stationed on guard in the Earl of Maynooth's townhouse."

"That would be a bit of a slap in the face, even for Armitage," I agreed. "Plus, she'd have had to have made her examination the night before in order for the story to have gotten into the papers."

"Very good, Natsuki. You _have_ been applying my methods, haven't you?"

"Indifferently."

"I'm quite serious, you know. Your skills of observation and deduction have been quite on par with the better grade of Scotland Yard detective on this case."

"If you mention Kanzaki's name I'm taking my virginity back," I warned.

"You will have quite a fight if you wish to take away my most treasured memory. The expression of bliss on Natsuki's face alone will warm my nights for years to come, and—"

"All right, you win!" I exclaimed, cheeks flaming. "Darn it, I was hoping you'd go a little longer without considering that acceptable teasing material."

Shizuru smiled placidly at me and sipped tea.

"I have decided to accept Natsuki's professions of love for what they are rather than trying to overanalyze or doubt them just because they are everything I have ever wished for. But, as I accept your feelings, then I feel capable of freely talking about them. In private, at least."

"That's bad enough." I gulped at my own tea, largely because it was there. "So, did you find anything in Adair's study?"

"I never got to see it. It was then that you arrived, so I had to slip out and down the back stairs to avoid running into you, Inspector Armitage, and Miss Chrysant. I was not sure, as yet, if I wanted to meet you face-to-face at all, considering my previous resolve to take myself out of your life, and I know that if I did it should not be before witnesses but in private. I intended to eavesdrop in case the Inspector revealed something valuable, when I passed through the front hall and noted that the morning post had been brought in. I glanced through the envelopes and found one addressed to the dead man in a hand I recognized from the other letters, so I abstracted it at once. Upon reading it, I knew that I needed to inform you directly of what was happening, and the rest you know."

"So you weren't actually sure that Tomoe was the killer until we talked to Mlle. Hélène, then?"

"No; it could have been anyone at that point. For all I knew, he might have hired her to work against another of his enemies—indeed, all signs pointed to her being his ally against you."

I couldn't argue with that.

"True enough. Shizuru...did you ever wonder if I _was_ guilty? Since you didn't know my connection to the case until I told you about how I'd investigated Adair, Tomoe might well have been his agent against a real threat from me. Did you ever suspect that her letter was real?"

She glanced down at her teacup, then up again and met my gaze.

"I did not believe it, but I did consider the possibility, yes. I know that you have the skills to cross the yard unseen and without leaving traces, to scale the wall to the window, and that you owned, in the past, a weapon capable of firing a shot that would not immediately be recognized as a gunshot."

"That's true enough, too," I said. "By the way, thank you."

"For what?"

"For telling me the truth. And for not ever stumbling over saying 'Natsuki' instead of 'you' when you must have been aching to do so."

Relief washed over her face.

"You are being very generous tonight."

"I'd have been upset if you tried to hide behind a pretty lie. But, even though you admitted the possibility, you didn't believe it? Why?"

"There were two reasons. For one, the coincidence was suspicious. This woman spent considerable time and effort looking for me, and then she went to England and was immediately involved in a matter opposing you? That sounded more like a scheme of some sort was involved, making me distrust the suggestion of your involvement."

"And the other?"

She lifted her cup to her lips again.

"Natsuki is not a cold-blooded murderer. I can imagine you killing a man if you had reason to do so, but not to sneak up on him and fire a shot while he sat unsuspecting at his desk. The idea is utterly absurd."

"Thank you," I said, pleased and flattered. It wouldn't have been so long ago that I might not have considered that a compliment, but I knew better now.

I set my still half-full teacup aside.

"So," I said, "between your knowledge, mine, what we've found out today, and what Tomoe said, we now know everything, or mostly everything."

"Indeed. Her behavior on the Continent is explained by her obsession with me. Also, we now know that I was partially wrong about this morning's letter."

"Oh?"

"I had said it was sent to be found by the police for the purpose of framing you. That was not incorrect, but it was also not complete. Yes, she intended that, but it was also meant as bait for me."

"Bait? How?"

"Do you not wonder how it was that she found my rooms in Soho? She followed us, not from Mr. Adair's home, as it is virtually impossible to lurk about in Park Lane without attracting attention. Bond Street, however, is a different matter: a crowded shopping district with crowds to hide amongst. Most likely she waited in a cab or carriage for us to arrive, investigating the clue that she'd helpfully provided. When we left Mlle. Hélène's, she simply followed us."

"I didn't notice anyone following us."

"Nor did I. But I ask you: how hard were you looking?"

"Eh?"

She smiled ruefully.

"For myself, I find that the emotional nature of our reunion—the anxiety, the fights, the sorrow, the relief, the anger, the joy—has gotten quite in the way of my professional skill. An excess of emotion is the absolute worst enemy of clear thinking. I do not see how such emotion could be avoided under the circumstances, and I certainly do not regret it—"

"You'd better not."

"—but the plain fact is that my attention, my observation, was all directed at you. We could have been followed by a half-dozen of Scotland Yard's clumsiest louts and I would not have noticed, let alone a skilled stalker like our quarry."

"I can't deny that. The kind of shock that left me fainting at your feet—of which we will never speak again—doesn't leave me much of my casual awareness to be noticing things like cabs following ours. So basically, while you were comparing the handwriting samples, she was checking out the building's layout, observing Mrs. Turner, preparing the drugged gin, and getting her plan ready. She even wrote the note she pushed under the door in your landlady's handwriting so as not to tip us off."

"Exactly."

"So now what do we do?"

"It is very simple. Tomoe has been hunting us both until now, but her ego required to foolishly show her hand. We now know who is responsible as well as her motivation. Now, Natsuki, _she_ becomes _our_ quarry."

"I don't see the 'simple' part. Where do we even begin, if you didn't know from before where to find her?"

"_Ara, ara_, does Natsuki truly not know? We have a notable clue."

"We do?"

"We follow the carriage."

"_What_ carriage?" We appeared to be back at the frustrating part of our old relationship, where she deduced things and didn't tell me about them.

"Tomoe's, of course. Consider: our best guess as to her method of shooting Mr. Adair involves the use of a carriage. Likewise, she must have had one ready in Bond Street; she would not have gone to so much trouble only to risk losing us if she could not immediately find a cab. We can go a step beyond that and speculate further that a private carriage is more likely than a growler."

"I think you may have jumped the gun in complimenting my deductive reasoning," I groused. "Why not a cab?"

"It would have attracted more attention in Park Lane, and it would have attracted considerably more attention in Bond Street since she might have had to wait an extended period of time. A cab that refuses to take a fare is the kind of thing that witnesses notice."

"If she thought of that."

"True, but Tomoe is not a fool. We can assume that an intelligent adversary will act intelligently whereas the stupid one may persist in folly or blindly stumble upon brilliance. It is for the same reason that we can dismiss the idea of her being the driver as a known quantity whereas with a cab they are a risk to talk even if well-paid. Now, she might conceivably have left the cab waiting in Soho, used it for her getaway, and then murdered the driver to cover her tracks, and it would do well to be aware of the possibility, but it would be wiser, in her place, to be able to avoid unnecessary complications."

"So, you think we can trace this carriage?"

"I do. Remember that she spent a considerable time recovering from her wounds before even being able to act, and still more time on the Continent in pursuit of me. She did not have time, upon returning to London, to build up a new network of useful contacts, but would be more than likely to use what she already knew."

I nodded, following her logic.

"That makes sense to me. And six months is short enough that those contacts would still be available. But we never knew who those contacts were, so how are you going to use them to trace her?"

"_We_ did not know who they were, but others very likely did, and we will ask them."

"And who is 'them'?"

"Consider, Natsuki, that Tomoe was an assassin of the Obsidian Court, and likely learned her way around London's underworld from them."

This last clue was enough for me to understand at last, and I groaned heavily.

"At least Mrs. Hudson won't have to make us dinner," I sighed, "since if we're talking about who I think we are we can at least eat while we get our answers."

~X X X~

_A/N: The details of the case Shizuru solved in Lausanne are taken from "The Adventure of Lady Frances Carfax," though in highly changed form. I was unable to find in casual research any particulars as to the organization of the Swiss police in the Victorian era, so Hofmann's rank is a complete guess._


	8. Chapter 8

Before I'd met Shizuru, my closest friend in the world was a woman named Mai Tokiha. I supposed that since Shizuru and I were now something other than "friends," Mai had regained that status. Ironically, she'd been the one to introduce us, since Shizuru and I were both regular customers at her restaurant who were looking for lodgings.

I owed Mai quite a lot for that, I reflected.

The Tokiha family ran a restaurant in the Japanese district of Limehouse. Mai's parents had died before I met her, so it was just her and her brother. Later, they'd added Mikoto Minagi, who'd been living feral on the London streets before Mai took her in. Just this past summer Mai's brother had married Akira Okuzaki, a talented young artist. Generally this meant that Akira would join Takumi Tokiha's family, but the Okuzakis were Somebody in the Japanese community, albeit Somebody who were tied to a number of shady businesses, so Takumi had actually joined his wife's family, which left the Tokihas down to two.

The smells of utterly delicious food washed over me as Shizuru and I walked into the restaurant. As usual, the place was busy, the tables choked with patrons like they always were at the dinner hour. I was glad Akira was the kind of girl who didn't mind her husband working outside the home, since Mai needed Takumi's help in the kitchen to keep up with the rush.

"Natsuki-san! And Viola-san, too! I haven't seen you in months!" Mikoto exclaimed in Japanese when we came in. She worked enthusiastically (if not always accurately) as a waitress and hostess. "I'm glad you're back. Natsuki-san was really sad when you left. I think she thought you were dead, but I'm glad that you're not. _Ani-ue_ didn't think that you were, either. Oh! Did Natsuki-san tell you that she found my _ani-ue_?"

"Yes, she did," Shizuru said. "In fact, that's why we came; we were hoping to talk to him." The girl's reckless enthusiasm didn't so much as dent her aplomb. Usually, Mikoto could make me tired just by her normal way of acting. In a lot of ways she was like a cat: she went full speed when she was interested in something and she curled up and slept when she was bored, though hanging around with Mai was gradually working a veneer of civilization back into her system.

"I'll take you to him!"

I glanced around the restaurant's only dining room. Reito Kanzaki was a pretty distinctive figure and I didn't see him anywhere at the tables or the counter.

"He's here, then? Where?"

"He's eating upstairs, silly!"

"Upstairs? You mean like the family does?"

"_Ani-ue_ is my family!"

"Yeah, but he's not Mai's."

Mikoto smiled hugely, showing off a whole mouthful of well-kept teeth.

"He'd like to be."

"Oh? And would you like that?" Shizuru asked.

"Mmn! Mmn!" Mikoto responded, her head bobbing up and down. "That would be great! Then Mai would be my big sister for real and I could stay with both of them!"

My own feelings about the idea were not so enthusiastic. In fact, I was completely opposed to the concept. Reito Kanzaki was almost exactly the opposite of the kind of person I would want to see with Mai. He was intelligent, but also sly and deceiving; he was handsome and charming, but used those things as weapons for his own advancement. Even while he'd been trying to kill me, he'd at the same time been refusing to include Shizuru in those attempts because he'd believed her uninvolved. And he'd saved my life and given me vital help in finding and defeating the Obsidian Prince—because he figured that doing so was the best route to his own survival.

To say that my opinion of Kanzaki was complicated was quite the understatement.

"Would you like anything to eat?" Mikoto offered.

"Yes, thank you," Shizuru said before I could say anything. "Tea, please, and something with shrimp. Tokiha-san can decide."

"Mmn. And Natsuki-san?"

"Give me a plate of _gyoza_ and three skewers of the _yakitori_. If Kanzaki gets out of line I can use them as weapons."

In truth, I was quite thoroughly armed, having brought my twin Smith & Wesson Safety Hammerless .32 revolvers with me, but it's not like I was going to let facts get in the way of a good smart remark.

"You'd have to be really careful," Mikoto said dubiously. "They break really easy and clothing will stop them." Mikoto was also Mai's bouncer on the rare occasion when someone got out of hand. Despite barely being five feet tall, she was the kind of person my old acquaintance Charlie Bart would have loved to get in his pit-fighting ring.

"Natsuki did not mean it literally, Mikoto-chan."

"Oh, that's good, then. I wouldn't want her to hurt _ani-ue_, anyway."

She led us through the swinging doors into the back hall and up the stairs to a small, neat room. Mai's was scarcely larger than Mrs. Turner's rooms in Soho and the furnishings were only of slightly better quality, but there was no aura of decay or dilapidation whatsoever. Rather, everything had been treated with loving care, neatly arranged, mended where necessary, and kept immaculately dusted and polished. Here, if the carpet was a bit threadbare, it was clear that it was because Mai was a frugal young woman who had better things to spend money on than a piece of vanity for a room only her family ever saw, rather than because someone didn't care.

"_Ani-ue_! Natsuki-san and Viola-san are here to see you."

"So I see."

Reito Kanzaki politely came to his feet from where he'd been seated at the room's round table. A bowl of Mai's ramen, the house specialty, was in front of him, and he'd been busy eating the chunks of meat and vegetables from it when we'd entered.

"Miss Kuga, Shizuru, it has been a long time," he said, speaking English. I suspected it was mostly for my benefit as he and Shizuru were both native speakers of Japanese. "I am happy to hear that the reports of your death were false, Shizuru. Would you care to join me?"

"Thank you," Shizuru said, and we sat down.

"I'll bring up your food when it's ready!" Mikoto said cheerily, and scampered back downstairs.

"So," Kanzaki said when his sister had left the room, "what can I do for you? Given Miss Kuga's opinion of me, I presume that it is not a social visit."

"I glanced at Shizuru, wondering again what _her_ opinion of Kanzaki was. They'd once been friends, or something like it. Their intellect, their smooth mannerisms, the way they kept their emotions inside, the elegance of their appearance, they all matched. With Kanzaki, though, it was about himself at the core of it. He'd joined the Obsidian Court to better himself, not out of any belief in the organization's goals or methods. He'd quit working for them to save his neck, not out of any sense of justice.

Did Shizuru count his secrets as a betrayal? Were his actions to hunt me down balanced by his vital help?

Would she even tell me?

When she didn't answer Reito's wordless prompting to speak up, I went ahead with it.

"Tomoe Marguerite is alive."

"Excuse me?"

"You need to work on your marksmanship," I said. "Apparently she was only wounded, and swam away when she fell in the river. And now she wants revenge."

"She can't seriously be thinking about finishing the job?"

"No, it's personal this time."

I had to be very careful here. I had never told Kanzaki about what Shizuru had done or why. Indeed, I'd never told him that Shizuru was even there—more than likely he'd picked up the "reports of her death" he'd commented on earlier from Mai or Mikoto. I hadn't given Mai any specifics other than the bare facts of Shizuru's apparent death, but Kanzaki _was_ a skilled detective and he had a lot of inside knowledge of the affair. It was entirely possible that he'd managed to deduce the facts, but if he hadn't, well, I couldn't afford to fill in the blanks for him.

"She tried to frame me for the Adair murder in order to get Shizuru to show up. That way she can take us both. She mentioned you, too, as a secondary objective."

That was true enough, so long as one remembered that "take" could have multiple meanings in this context.

"Revenge?" Kanzaki mused. He sighed and shook his head. "This is why she would never have made a good Herald. She was—is—an excellent killer, in terms of skill. But she could never separate her emotions from the job in any meaningful way. She now lacks the protection and influence of the Obsidian Court, but she wants to attempt to kill the three of us anyway? A task she failed at before when backed by additional resources?" He shook his head. "Such foolish hubris."

Shizuru nodded.

"In our one encounter with her, she seemed mentally unbalanced."

"Which is her polite way of saying that Tomoe is a raving lunatic. What do the alienists call it? Homicidal mania?"

"At the very least."

Kanzaki picked up his chopsticks.

"Well, I certainly appreciate the warning. I shall make caution a watchword until she is brought to heel...but somehow, I suspect that you didn't come to me solely for my welfare?"

"There's Mai, Mikoto, and Takumi's welfare," I said. "_That's_ worth coming here."

"Yes," he agreed, "it is. I know it is ill-bred of me to eat while your food has not arrived, but I hope you'll understand if I don't want this to get cold?"

"Go ahead," I said, wondering if I was supposed to take his "ill-bred" line as a remark about my illegitimacy or just as an ordinary adjective. You never knew with someone like Kanzaki.

"Thank you." 

While he began slurping noodles, Shizuru started to fill him in on the details, first of Tomoe's killing of Adair and then the events of today. She had just gotten to the start of our face-to-face encounter with Tomoe when the door opened and not Mikoto but Mai herself came into the room.

"Viola-san, it's good to see you again! We all thought—that is, Natsuki said—" Mai started stumbling over words, speaking Japanese, as she neither had Mikoto's innocence nor Kanzaki's aplomb to let her say that she'd thought Shizuru was dead without some discomfort.

"I know," Shizuru stepped in to save her the trouble of wrestling with it. "I'm afraid that I gave Natsuki very good reason to think such a thing without meaning to, and I am very sorry for any worry or concern I may have caused, Tokiha-san."

"It's not me but Natsuki that you should be apologizing to," Mai said frankly, dealing out plates from her tray while she did as well as pouring our first cups of tea. "But I suppose you must already have done that?"

She glanced at me with that last question for verification, so I nodded.

"That's all right, then. But you do anything to hurt Natsuki again and you'll wish you _had_ really died." She shook her finger warningly under Shizuru's nose while I gaped and Kanzaki smiled indulgently.

"That would be true regardless," Shizuru answered without a trace of humor, but her answer brought a smile to Mai's face.

"Good; that's the way it should be," the busty redhead declared. "And whenever you're not chasing some criminal, let me know and I'll give you a proper welcome-back dinner." She pumped her fist and patted her bicep like a carnival strongman. "I'll go all-out and show off all my skills with a real banquet!"

"That's good, since Shizuru missed Takumi-kun's wedding dinner, which was completely amazing."

"I look forward to it, Tokiha-san."

"You should!" Mai said with a grin. "Do you need anything, Reito?"

"No thank you, I'm fine."

"All right, then; I'll leave you to your chatter about crime and murder and whatever else you're trying to ruin your digestion with." She gave us a jaunty wave and left.

"She called you 'Reito,' without an honorific," Shizuru observed.

"So do you," I noted.

"That is acceptable among close associates while speaking English. Indeed, the Americans all but insist upon it on even casual acquaintance. Your friend, however, is a native speaker of Japanese and so would not bend custom." She took up her chopsticks and deftly plucked a large, juicy-looking shrimp out of her dinner. "I trust your intentions towards Miss Tokiha are honorable?"

Kanzaki spoiled her chance to warn him and tease me at the same time by suggesting that I would play the part of the aggrieved father if he treated Mai poorly or some such thing. It was actually kind of unnerving that I'd been able to imagine nearly the entire scenario in my head. But as I'd noted, Kanzaki made the whole thing unnecessary.

"They are," he said flatly, without the slightest trace of his usual oh-so-annoying smirk.

"My God, Mikoto wasn't kidding _or_ confused, was she?" I gaped. "I knew you been flirting with Mai, but..._marriage_?"

He nodded.

"I love her, Kuga, which is precisely as much interrogation as I'm willing to take from you on the subject."

"As much as _you're_ willing? Since when do _you_ get to choose how much—" I burst out, but Shizuru lightly touched me on the arm and that was enough to restrain me. We had more urgent problems than my friend's romantic future. I settled back into my chair. "Just...keep an eye out, all right? She's my friend and yours, and that makes two reasons why that knife maniac might want to get at her."

He nodded, and I remembered that when we'd first mentioned Tomoe he'd agreed immediately with me that Mai and her family worth protecting. Maybe he really was serious about her? Shizuru, after all, came off a lot like Kanzaki to a stranger and I knew _her_ feelings about love...

I picked up a skewer and began tearing into the grilled chicken and onions to keep me from opening my mouth while I was still confused.

"In any case, Shizuru, please go on," Kanzaki invited. "I'd like to hear the rest of it, and how you think I can help."

She did exactly that while we addressed ourselves to the food and tea. We had just emptied our plates when she reached the end of her observations and deductions.

"It's for those reasons that Natsuki and I believe that it is most likely Miss Marguerite has the aid of some manner of accomplice, undoubtedly subordinate to her rather than a genuine partner of any kind."

"Ah, I see, and you would like my help, if possible, in identifying who this person might be through my knowledge of Tomoe's past activities when she was associated with the Obsidian Court?"

"Indeed."

He nodded.

"Let me think about that. It would have to be someone Tomoe felt she could control for a project like this. A simple hired hand would not do, even if she intends to do away with him once it was over."

"That was our thought as well."

The former Herald of the Obsidian Prince pursed his lips. Shizuru waited placidly, sipping tea. I fidgeted impatiently, turning my teacup on the table but not drinking. It was times like this that I wished I hadn't given up smoking simply because it would give me something to do with my hands while I waited for Kanzaki to throw his mind back six months and revisit his memories of a life he'd left behind almost as thoroughly as I'd put behind that part of my past.

I had hopes, though, that he might remember something useful. Whatever issues I had with Kanzaki, I knew that the man had an orderly, exacting mind. At one point he'd learned that his mentor, the Obsidian Prince, had lost faith in him and had decided to let Tomoe take the position of Herald—if she killed the existing Herald, Kanzaki. Kanzaki would undoubtedly have responded to that threat by learning everything that he could about his adversary, ready to use any and every fact about her to manipulate her onto the killing ground. He'd actually done something of the sort, letting Tomoe fight with me. If I'd won, the job was done; since I hadn't he'd been able to shoot her while her full attention was on me.

That last part bothered me more than I liked to admit. The plain fact of it was that we were facing an enemy that I had faced before—and who had beaten me. I could make excuses, and some of them were even valid ones, but the truth was that she and I had fought woman-to-woman and she'd won. Without Kanzaki's rescue, she'd have strangled the life out of me with her bare hands—and while, yes, I'd been weakened by an ambush before the fight, it had again been Kanzaki's manipulations that had alerted me to the possibility of the ambush in the first place. Without that, she might have killed me outright before the fight even started.

How was I supposed to protect Shizuru from a woman who'd proven herself better, deadlier in combat than I was? Why would a second outcome be any different than the first?

The plain truth of the matter was that Tomoe scared me. She was insane, she was vicious, she was deadly. It wasn't gibbering, hide-under-the-bed terror, but it was a genuine fear, that itch at the back of my neck that someone was out there lurking, a threat that I had to respect. Damn it, but I did not want to lose Shizuru again, not after she'd come back to me and we'd finally had a chance to discover our love for one another. I didn't want to lose this feeling so soon after finding it.

In a weird sort of way, I realized that I owed Tomoe. After all, it was her obsession with Shizuru that had brought the woman I loved back to London, back into my life. Without that, she'd have stayed away forever and I'd never have learned that she was even alive, let alone how I truly felt about her. For that, I had to be grateful to the insane murderess. Not, of course, the kind of gratitude that would actually suggest that I owed her a favor, but it was an interesting chain of events.

Regardless, one thing I was certain of was that with such a dangerous opponent, we couldn't sit back and wait for her to act. We had to turn the tables on her and hunt her down, not let her come hunting us. That was why I hoped so strongly that Kanzaki could come up with something useful, something that could put us on Tomoe's track.

For once, my hopes were answered.

"There's one person I can think of," he said. "Mind you, that assumes that she is looking for someone who isn't just a hired henchman; she would certainly be able to find any number of those without trouble. The members of Lautrec's docksiders, just to name one."

"We both agreed that was less likely, though," Shizuru pointed out his own words.

"True, and if we're right there is only one name that readily comes to mind: one Miss Miya Clochette."

"Oh?"

"Her father was of Belgian extraction like Tomoe's, and Tomoe used that as a starting point towards building a relationship between the two of them."

"They were lovers?" I asked.

Kanzaki shook his head.

"No, it was nothing like that. I doubt that Tomoe even took notice of her as a woman. Miss Clochette was a meek young girl by comparison, while Tomoe was bold, exciting, and dynamic—in all ways an attractive companion."

"I see," Shizuru said. "The kind of girl that naturally looks to a stronger, more forceful friend for direction."

"Like the queen bee and her clique of workers at the seminary," I contributed. A faint smile flickered across Kanzaki's lips; I had a feeling it was at the image of me attending a ladies' finishing school but if it was, he was smart enough to not say so.

"That describes their relationship quite well. Miss Clochette was Tomoe's lackey, no more, but one who was bound to her by ties of admiration, loyalty, and a hint of fear."

I nodded.

"That type, there's always a little fear involved. They attach themselves to someone stronger, because they don't think they themselves can do much of anything, and the strong person's power—social, physical, whatever—will keep them safe. But they're always a little worried in the back of their minds that if they let their leader down that that power will get turned on them."

"Very well summarized, Natsuki," Shizuru said. "For those reasons, I believe that should Tomoe have turned to Miss Clochette for aid, that Miss Clochette would assist her. Their previous relationship combined with admiration and fear, would win out, unless she had acquired a new protector in the interim."

"If she had, I don't know about it," Kanzaki supplied. "That means almost nothing, however, as I have not only spent little time with my former associates from the Obsidian Court, but I have actively been avoiding them for reasons which will no doubt seem obvious."

"No doubt," I agreed. "I have a question, though. If this Clochette girl was so close to Tomoe, why didn't Tomoe use her to help when she was after me six months ago?"

"That was because I made certain Miss Clochette was occupied with other tasks," Kanzaki said, and this time he actually did smirk. "After all, since I knew that Tomoe was going to pose a threat to me, I did not want her to have lackeys on hand who would be more loyal to her than to me."

"Sneaky."

"Shall we say, rather, cautious? After all, the best way to escape a bad situation is to not be placed in it in the first place."

"I'm sticking with my first description."

"Natsuki, be nice," Shizuru chided. "After all, Reito has given us a name, is about to provide us with possible contact information, and has undertaken to protect your friends while we are searching for Tomoe. I would think that under these circumstances you could show some courtesy."

I took her advice and didn't say anything. Besides, she had a point. We were trusting Kanzaki to protect Mai in case Tomoe tried to get at me through my friends. As the incident with Mrs. Turner pointed out graphically, she had no problem with dragging in outsiders and third parties.

"In any case, I do remember where Miss Clochette could be found. Again, this information is six months out of date, but she lived at 32 Rundlett's Close, in Mile End."

"Mile End, did you say?" Shizuru pounced on that piece of information.

"Yes, is that important?"

"It might be. Do you recall the letter Mlle. Hélène gave us, Natsuki?" she turned to me.

"I never actually got to read it."

"True, but did you recall that it provided the delivery instructions for the air-gun?"

"Yes...you can't be saying that it was 32 Rundlett's Close?"

"No, it wasn't _that_ obvious, but it _was_ to be called for at Talmadge's Private Hotel, which is also in Mile End, no more than a five-minute walk from Rundlett's Close."

"Bloody hell. Do you think she's staying with Clochette?"

"Possibly. I would not, if I was her. London has many anonymous lodging-places without her having to trust herself to a known associate. Still, this serves to increase the connection between the two of them."

"It does more than that," Kanzaki interjected. We both turned to him, and that knowing smirk of his was firmly in place.

"_Ara, ara_. Reito, do you know something that you're not telling us?"

"Only that you haven't yet asked me about Miss Clochette's background or why she was associated with the Obsidian Court."

Shizuru blinked, then her smile, too, grew into almost a match for Kanzaki's.

"Oh, I see. That _would_ explain one inconsistency, wouldn't it?"

"Quite so."

"Would the two of you mind sharing, or do I not get to know about whatever this is?"

"Miss Clochette's father was a sea captain; he met her mother in Calcutta. She was the daughter of a British Army major and, owing to M. Clochette's travels, his wife and child stayed with his wife's family. He died when Miya was four, and in due course the family returned to England when Major Sebastian mustered out. Major Sebastian, you see, was one of the finest big-game hunters in the Empire, and his daughter has at least one tiger kill to her credit."

"Which explains how Tomoe, who did not even carry a gun when she attacked you in the past, suddenly gained such skill with firearms as to snipe Mr. Adair with an air-gun," Shizuru finished for him. "The plan was Tomoe's, but it was her worker bee, as you expressed it, that carried it out for her."

"So where does that leave us?"

"That, I think, depends entirely on how thoroughly Miss Clochette understands the position she now occupies."

~X X X~

_A/N: Why, yes, I _am_ a Mai/Reito shipper; why do you ask? ^_-_


	9. Chapter 9

"At least that's one thing we don't need to worry about any longer," I remarked to Shizuru on the way to Mile End. "There's no way that Tomoe would ever let her lackey handle the job of killing me, so air-gun bullets whistling out of the night aren't going to be a problem."

"That is only the case if my deduction about Miss Clochette is correct, Natsuki. Without evidence, it is only speculation, and we must not fail to take the proper precautions."

"Take precautions, yes, but let's be honest, Shizuru. I feel a lot more comfortable risking my life on your speculations than on someone else's facts."

"Natsuki trusts me that much, even after...?" she said, surprised.

I sighed heavily.

"I have three answers to that. One, even then, when you went behind my back and did everything else, you did it all for the sake of keeping me alive. So yes, even when you were at your _least_ trustworthy, I could always believe I was safe in your hands."

"I'm not sure that _safe_ is exactly what I want Natsuki to feel when she is in my hands," she purred. I just gritted my teeth.

"Shizuru, if _I_ can notice that you're teasing just because it's easier than talking seriously, it's way too late to try it," I pointed out.

"Very well; what is your second answer?"

"Two, I'm through dredging up the past with you. I know how you feel, you know how I feel, and what's done is done. We're moving forward with who we are now, not dwelling on our mistakes, all right?"

"It will not be entirely easy to accept that," she admitted.

"It won't be for me, either, but we can both at least try instead of dwelling on it. And, three, you're backsliding. You used the third person for me again in a serious moment."

"I apologize for that."

"I know it's a hard habit to break, but...it's about trusting that I love you, too, and not backing away just because things got a little bit sticky. It's okay to have arguments, and...well, I've never had a lover before, Shizuru, so I know I'm going to make an ass of myself sooner or later. Probably sooner. If you're just going to back off whenever I lose my temper you're not going to be happy with me for very long and if you can't bring yourself to tell me when I'm being stupid because you're afraid I'll hate you then you're not giving me much credit for really loving you."

She looked at me in startled surprise for a couple of seconds before a smile slowly crept across her features.

"Very well. If you would prefer for me to be naggy and critical when I deem it necessary, I will do so."

"I can't win against you, can I?"

Shizuru leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.

"Do you want to?"

Pleased by her spontaneous display of affection, I smiled.

"Not really."

"Good, then."

Talmadge's Private Hotel proved to be a weatherbeaten, run-down institution, which fit well with the rest of the district. In contrast with the shabbiness of Mr. Turner's rooming-house, though, the hotel carried more of an atmosphere of faded gentility, of a grand old lady slowly crumbling into decrepitude. The paneling was darkened by smoke and oil but had once gleamed, the well-worn carpets had once been luxurious, the scuffed and marked lobby furniture had once been expensive. Now, though, it seemed deserted; a heavyset man with a handlebar moustache and receding hairline manned the reception desk but no one else was about. A glance through the side door into the hotel bar showed only a single elderly gentleman taking a brandy-and-soda in the corner.

That was good. Our sort of business did better when there wasn't an audience.

"Good evening," Shizuru said, approaching the manager while I strolled idly over by the base of a broad staircase that still held hints of a faded grandeur. At Shizuru's suggestion, I was wearing a hat with a veil and a long cloak pulled close around me so that my face and attire were concealed.

"Good evening. Would you ladies be wanting a room?"

She shook her head.

"No, but I was hoping that you would oblige me with some information."

She placed one of her cards on the desk, and he picked it up and peered at it closely; the dim light likely making it hard to read.

"'Shizuru Viola, Consulting Detective'? What's that?"

"Just what it says. I am a detective who takes on private cases, as well as for the police."

"The police, you say?"

"Please do not be alarmed. As I said, we are only looking for information. There is no need to worry."

"We've got no trouble here," he said hastily.

"Of course, but you may be able to save us a good deal of trouble." She set a shilling in almost precisely the same spot where the card had been. The manager apparently didn't need a closer look at it, though, as he made it vanish into a pocket almost instantly.

"So what can I do for you, miss?"

"On the third of this month, a package was delivered here by Mlle. Yvette Hélène to be picked up. Do you recall it?"

"I do. It was a long box, four or five feet, wrapped in brown paper and pretty heavy, and addressed to some funny foreign name, Na...something like 'Nasty'..."

"Natsuki Kuga?"

"That's it! You could have knocked me over with a feather when it turned out to be a young woman. But then again, you can never tell with foreign names, can you?"

Shizuru, with her Japanese first name and Italian last name, did not make any of the number of remarks that must have occurred to her.

"Still," the manager continued, "she didn't talk like a foreigner; her English was perfect, like she was a lady. That made it all the stranger."

"Oh? Was there something strange about her?"

"She was dressed like a man! She had on a white shirt and a waistcoat and those blue denim trousers you sometimes see lower-class Americans wear, though she didn't sound American, at least not from what I know."

"I see. And what about her hair, her face, things like that?"

The clothing might just have been a blind by Tomoe or Clochette, knowing that I often dressed that way, but the manager proceeded to give a reasonably accurate description of me. I would have found it a little frightening had Shizuru not deduced that it would happen. Tomoe had covered her tracks, and made certain that even the dimmest policeman could follow the trail from Adair to Mlle. Hélène to here to complete the frame.

"I see. That is a very complete description," Shizuru said. "You make an excellent witness."

"Thank you, Miss Viola."

"Since your memory is so clear, then, would you confirm something?" She beckoned to me and I came over to stand next to her. "Is this the woman who picked up the package?"

I swept off the hat and cloak. He stared at me in shock, jolted to be face-to-face with the woman he described, excepting only minor differences in my wardrobe such as the ordinary trousers rather than Levis that I had on.

"It...that is, she looks..."

"You could save yourself a great deal of trouble," Shizuru said, "by telling us about the person who actually did pick up the package, and who paid you to lie and claim that it was Natsuki."

"I...I don't know what you're talking about," the manager stammered.

"Funny, you seemed to be very clear in your mind when you thought you were framing me to the police."

"Framing—"

"Giving false testimony that I was involved in a crime. You thought you were telling the police all about me."

"You're not—" His eyes flew to Shizuru.

"I told you that I consult for the police, which is the truth. It merely happens that in this matter I am working for Natsuki."

"But thanks to that, now I know for a fact that you were willing to tell the police that I picked up the weapon used to murder Ronald Adair. You tried to connect me to a hanging offense." I waited a beat to let that sink in, then added, "It's a stupid frame, too. If I was going to shoot someone, I'd use a gun like this."

I didn't actually point the revolver at him, but merely held it up before his face and slipped it back into my jacket. The sight of it was enough; he'd already blanched at the mention of murder and the glimpse of the gun made him break out in a sweat.

"Who was it? Who picked up the gun? Who told you what to tell the police if they asked?"

"I...that is..."

"Please, sir, collect yourself. You must realize what a position you have placed yourself in by accepting money for offering false testimony. Indeed, you should consider yourself fortunate. Had you made an official statement you could be facing charges, as we already have evidence that Natsuki was not associated with the gun delivered here. Indeed, had you testified under oath at the inquest you would be guilty of perjury. You can avoid a great deal of trouble simply by telling the truth."

"Legal trouble and otherwise," I added a little extra to Shizuru's argument.

The man's moustache twitched as he took a deep breath, steadying himself.

"All right, I'll tell you. I mean, I earned my money. I told you the story she gave me. It's not my fault you already knew it was a cock-and-bull tale, is it?"

I wondered if this was some new variation of honor among thieves, because it sounded like he was trying to justify to himself that he had given fair service and so was entitled to keep the money he'd been paid to lie! That kind of sophistry didn't make any sense at all to me, but people did weird things, sometimes, to stay square with their consciences.

"Of course not," Shizuru said.

"Well, you're right, the girl who picked up the package did pay me to tell that story. You've got to believe me, I didn't know anything about it being a gun or involved in the Adair murder. I read about that in the paper! I swear, if I'd known, I would have gone right to the police with the real truth."

"You will probably have to," Shizuru said. "Of course, there will be no need to bother them with irrelevant details such as how you tried to trick us."

"Thank you, Miss Viola. Anyway, I didn't know the girl or anything like that, but she looked younger than the two of you, with a thin face, high forehead, and plain brown hair."

That fitted the description Kanzaki had given us of Miya Clochette before we'd left Mai's.

"What about the false story?"

"She gave me two quid and said that if anybody asked about it, I should tell them that Natsuki Kuga had picked up the package like it had happened, but she gave me a description of what the person looked like."

"And that was all?" I asked warningly. "You have no idea who this person is, where she lives?"

"No, miss, I don't!"

"Did you happen to observe her when she left the hotel?" Shizuru asked. "Did someone else join her on the street? Did she walk away, or hail a cab?"

"I'm afraid I didn't look. I don't usually worry with what goes on outside, and, well, if you'll pardon my plain speaking, she wasn't the kind of girl that a man takes a second look at. A little like a mouse, if you know what I mean?"

"Yes, I quite think that I do. Thank you for your time. Come, Natsuki; I believe that this gentleman has taken up quite enough of our time."

Some people might have said she'd gotten that phrase backwards. I wasn't one of them.

We exited the hotel into the stink of the London night air. It seemed especially foul that night, or maybe it was just that I was thinking of Tomoe.

"I almost feel sorry for Miss Clochette," Shizuru remarked.

"_Sorry_ for her?" I didn't _quite_ yelp.

"Consider the facts. Based upon their respective skills, we suspect that it was she rather than Tomoe who killed Ronald Adair. It was she who picked up the air-gun and bribed the hotel manager to implicate you. I would not be at all surprised to learn that it was she who wrote the letters to Mlle. Hélène and Mr. Adair, at Tomoe's dictation."

"A double layer to the frame," I realized. "If it wasn't for you seeing Tomoe with Adair, there'd be no hard evidence at all to connect her to the crime. That way, even if her plan otherwise goes perfectly, if the police see through the attempt to frame me for Adair's death, it will be Clochette they focus on. 'M' could even stand for Miya as easily as it does for Marguerite."

"Exactly. Any attempt by Miss Clochette to implicate Tomoe in the crimes will be looked at skeptically by the police, who would have no evidence, as well as little knowledge of the complex backstory involved."

"And since Tomoe's plan involves me being dead and you being passionately in love with her, there wouldn't be witnesses." I pulled a face. "Not that _that's_ going to happen."

"True, but what we need to find out is if we can trust Miss Clochette to understand what would follow if it _did_ happen."

She began to move up the sidewalk and I fell into step alongside her.

"Shizuru, are you planning something?"

"Why, Natsuki, whatever would make you believe that?"

~X X X~

It was three hours later, just getting on towards eleven o'clock, when we approached the door of 32 Rundlett's Close. The back of my neck had that familiar, tingling itch that it got when I felt like I was stepping into someone's sights. There were a lot of things that could go wrong with this plan, and not the least of which was the possibility that Clochette might panic. It was one thing to know that Tomoe wouldn't want anyone but herself to kill me and wouldn't want Shizuru dead at all, but quite another to assume that those orders would be followed. Especially if Clochette felt her back was to the wall. She might be stupidly loyal to Tomoe, but would that still hold in the face of a direct threat?

"I still don't think this is a good idea," I murmured, but I followed Shizuru to the door of the small house anyway. Maybe I wasn't in the best position to toss out adjectives like "stupidly loyal."

Shizuru knocked on the door. I stood slightly back and to the side, so Clochette—or Tomoe, if she was there—wouldn't have a clear line of sight to me through the open door. There was no answer to Shizuru's knock, so she knocked again. This time I could hear the sound of scuffling feet, and in a moment, the door opened.

"I'm sorry to disturb you at such a late hour, Miss Clochette," Shizuru said, recognizing the woman from the description we had of her and, no doubt, the fact that her dress was too nice to belong to a servant even though its dull brown color, even trimmed with white, seemed very self-effacing. "It is very important that we speak with you as soon as possible. My name is Shizuru Viola, and this is Natsuki Kuga."

Clochette let out a little gasp.

"You are obviously familiar with our names," Shizuru went on. "It should therefore come as no surprise to you that we are here."

"I...no, I was just startled to see someone at this hour."

"What of Tomoe Marguerite? Will you also deny the association with her?"

Her defense on that point was as utterly unconvincing as the first. She flinched, then shook her head, stammering "No—I mean, yes—I mean, I don't know her." She then stiffened, straightened her back, and said, "I haven't any idea what you are talking about. Now, please be off. It is clear that you are under some mistaken impression. No doubt you have confused me with another person of similar name."

Shizuru shook her head sadly.

"I had hoped that we could be civilized about this and have an adult conversation," she said, "but it seems that I was wrong." This made Clochette flinch; she looked to be around seventeen or eighteen years old and she no doubt felt the sting keenly when she was treated as a child. Particularly when she'd bloodied her hands by killing, something that was by no means the province of adults only but was _thought_ to be by many. "Nonetheless, if you insist that you are not the Miya Clochette who last night fired a soft-nosed .38 caliber revolver bullet into the head of the Honorable Ronald Adair using an air-gun designed by one Von Herder and constructed by and purchased from Mlle. Yvette Hélène—"

"Ssh!" Clochette hissed. Shizuru had steadily begun to raise her voice as she spoke and if she'd gone on for much longer in the same fashion her voice would be ringing through the close, exciting the interest of such neighbors as might be awake. "I...that is...you can't just stand on my front step saying such things!"

"Perhaps I should elucidate the methods by which I arrived at this conclusion? Should we begin with the testimony of the witnesses in the Earl of Maynooth's household? Or the police surgeon's autopsy evidence? Perhaps the details provided by Mlle. Hélène, although as you no doubt were driving the carriage in which Miss Marguerite kept watch outside the shop and followed us to my temporary lodgings in Soho you likely have a very good idea as to what was said already. Must I go on?"

Her tone was not harsh and strident, which I thought almost made it worse as Shizuru calmly, reasonably hammered away at Clochette's pathetic denials with point after point. I had a hard time believing this nervous shrinking violet was a cold-blooded sniper, but direct confrontation clearly was not her forte.

"Maybe she's got Tomoe hiding inside?" I suggested sarcastically. "That might be why she won't let us in."

"I've got nothing to hide!" Clochette huffed back at me, apparently having an easier time countering my bluntness.

"Then why not let us in?" Shizuru asked. "Surely you do not wish to have this conversation on your front stoop for the entertainment of the entire close."

"I don't wish to have it at all."

Shizuru shook her head.

"_Ara_, I was told that you were more intelligent than that, Miss Clochette. Should you continue in this fashion, we will be driven to resort to crude police methods of obtaining a warrant and entering by force. Of course you will be watched during the entire waiting period so that you have no opportunity to remove evidence from your house and conceal it, no chance to flee, and no ability to send a message warning Miss Marguerite." She paused for a beat, then added, "This conversation will occur, you must realize. Your obstinacy accomplishes nothing but makes the eventual result less pleasant for you."

The last sally seemed to finally get through the girl's defenses; she bit her lip and stepped back.

"C-come in, then."

I kept my eye on her as she led us into a small parlor. Her hesitant manner might mask an attempted ambush, or if she believed herself cornered she might lash out. Given that we were already convinced she was a killer, taking a chance by letting her out of our sight would be truly stupid.

"May I offer you a drink?" she asked. I hoped that it was a somewhat pathetic attempt to drug us rather than an actual offer of courtesy, given the circumstances.

"I do not believe that will be necessary, thank you," Shizuru replied.

The three of us sat on comfortable chairs. Unlike most of the locations I'd visited since my reunion with Shizuru, Clochette's house was not shabby, either in the cheap way of the Soho lodgings or the tattered gentility of the hotel. Rather, it was outfitted with nice furnishings suitable to a middle-class home, albeit with a number of conventionally Anglo-Indian touches such as brass statuettes of Hindu deities. A tiger-skin rug was spread out before the hearth and the stuffed head of the great cat, mouth open in a perpetual snarl, was mounted above the mantel. I wondered if these were relics of the creature Clochette had shot and I was firmly reminded that no matter how cowed she seemed now this woman was a killer. I _could not_ take her lightly.

"Then I suggest you come to the point," she said, squaring her shoulders. "You have forced your way in here with threats of scandalizing me before my neighbors—"

"Where are your servants, Miss Clochette?" Shizuru interrupted her, her tone even but firm. "A house this size should have at least one, quite possibly two or three depending on how much you yourself contribute to the housework. You certainly never should have had to answer your own door. But you were forced to dismiss them, were you not, so that they could not be witnesses to your business with Miss Marguerite."

I hadn't made that connection, but of course Shizuru was correct.

"What do my servants have to do with you?"

"It was merely an observation. Now that we are alone together and unlikely to be overheard, I will speak plainly. You are assisting Miss Marguerite with her plan to first humiliate and then kill Natsuki. This assistance involved murder. What you have perhaps not yet realized is that it is _you_ whose neck has been placed firmly in the noose."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"If that were true, you would not have let us inside."

"That was simply to silence you. Do you think that I wanted a scene on my front step, ridiculous as your accusations were?"

"Then you will not mind if I explain myself?"

"I doubt very much if you can, but continue."

"Please understand first of all that Miss Marguerite confronted us directly earlier today. I am sure you know this because, as I earlier pointed out, you were her carriage-driver. We are therefore precisely aware of her motives and intentions and it is pointless to deny them. Similarly, we are thoroughly aware of your association with her from your time working for the Order of the Obsidian Court. This is public knowledge among your acquaintances and it is a fatuous exercise for you to deny it."

Clochette didn't say anything, which was at least better than her protests.

"The letters received by Mr. Adair and those received by Mlle. Helene have been compared; despite the attempt at forging Natsuki's writing is is clear that they were written in the same hand and that that hand is not Natsuki's. Thanks to Inspector Armitage's ability to convince the family to permit a post-mortem examination, a bullet was extracted from Mr. Adair's skull which matches the type fired by a 'Von Herder' model of air-gun. You have been identified as the woman who took delivery of the air-gun and, even more damningly, attempted to bribe a witness to falsely identify Natsuki as the person who did so. Likewise, your marksmanship skills are a known fact." She gestured at the tiger head. "The plain truth, Miss Clochette, is that the police could arrest you this very moment for Mr. Adair's murder and be quite confident that you would be found guilty and sentenced to hang."

"Then why don't you bring them in, if you're so sure? This is all nothing but a farrago of lies!"

Shizuru shook her head.

"I did not bring the police for two reasons, Miss Clochette. The first one is that neither I nor Natsuki have been retained to solve the murder of Ronald Adair. Our interest in this matter is personal. The second reason, closely allied to the first, is that we have no interest in you. As I am certain that you already understand, even if you have no desire to admit it to yourself, you are nothing but Tomoe Marguerite's weapon against Natsuki just as the air-gun was yours against Mr. Adair. Neither she nor I have any interest in pawns other than how their use, sacrifice, or capture can help win the greater game."

Shizuru leaned forward in her chair, her gaze fixed on Clochette's. I knew the intensity of that gaze, and I wasn't surprised that the girl shuddered.

"I want to know where I can find Miss Marguerite. This is between myself, Natsuki, and she. If you tell me, then I will tell the police nothing. We can avoid all that unpleasantness. Otherwise..." She shrugged. "Well, I would have to console myself by removing one of her pawns from the board."

The girl shivered again, a stricken expression growing on her face. I wondered, then, how much Tomoe might have told her about _why_ she was pursuing Shizuru and what twisted impression that might have made. Who knew? Perhaps that might have been what persuaded her to speak up.

She clenched her fists, pressing them hard against her thighs.

"All right; you win. But you can't tell her how you learned this!"

"That would, I believe, be counterproductive for us all."

Clochette sighed.

"She has a room in Limehouse, in the Chinese section. She told me that she didn't think you would look there, among a group of people that weren't hers." Clochette named an address.

"She'd stick out like a sore thumb," I said. "Within an hour, a dozen witnesses would know even if the landlord was willing—or could be paid—to keep silent."

"That is the reason why she would not believe that I would seek her there, Natsuki," Shizuru explained. "So long as you hide where no one looks, it does not matter how well or how poorly that you are concealed."

She rose from her seat.

"Thank you, Miss Clochette, for your cooperation."

"It's not as if you left me with any choice," she said bitterly.

"That is true. Nonetheless, I do appreciate that you perceive that, rather than forcing us to settle matters the difficult way. I trust, Miss Clochette, that we will not meet again. Come, Natsuki, let us be off. We have spent too much time as it is on this."

I rose and followed Shizuru out of the parlor, still keeping my eye on Clochette the whole time. We saw ourselves out, then quickly made our way across the close. There was a waiting four-wheeler; we stepped up inside, but only long enough for Shizuru to give the sergeant and two constables seated inside the Limehouse address.

"Be very careful. We do not believe that you will encounter anything, but our quarry may be there, or she may have arranged a trap."

"Yes, Miss Viola," the sergeant said. "The inspector explained that all pretty fully, but we appreciate the concern." He touched his helmet-brim to her.

"You're welcome."

With that we went out the door on the far side and, still concealed by the body of the cab, stepped up to the mouth of the alley opposite and slipped into the shadows. When we were in position, a constable pulled the door shut and the driver whipped up the cab, the growler proceeding out of the close.

"I gather it worked, then," Armitage said. She, Chrysant, and another pair of constables, these in plain clothes, had already been waiting for us to join them.

"Exactly as we planned," Shizuru told her.

"For goodness sake, Viola, I'm not so vain as to have to pretend that this is in any way my idea to save my pride," she huffed. "Since you sent the cab on, I gather she gave you an address."

"Yes, in Limehouse."

"But you think that she was lying."

"She is a very poor liar, and her initial denials gave me an opportunity to observe several of her 'tells.'"

"You're the express," Armitage said with a shrug.

"It's 'expert,' Lady Haruka."

I hadn't noticed anything in particular about Clochette that would support Shizuru's assertion, but that was why Shizuru was Shizuru and I wasn't. The plan had been straightforward but with multiple options. If Clochette had refused to see us or give us an address, then Armitage would take over, accost her, and see if the reality of the situation gave her second thoughts about cooperating. If she gave us an address that we believed was the truth, then the groups would have switched. But this was what Shizuru had considered to be the most likely scenario: that Clochette would pretend to give in but attempt to deceive us.

"After all, she was willing to commit murder for Tomoe's sake," she had explained. "I believe that it would take more than the threat of arrest to break that loyalty." I couldn't argue the point.

Sure enough, not ten minutes after the cab had departed, ostensibly with us in it, the door to 32 Rundlett's Close opened and a woman emerged, wearing a cloak and a narrow-brimmed hat.

"Is that her?" Armitage asked.

"Yes, judging by her build and her walk."

"Then let's hope she's no better at spotting a tail than she is at lying. I don't like letting murderers run free like this."

"Miss Clochette is little more than a weapon in the hands of Tomoe Marguerite. It is Miss Marguerite who is the true murderess, and I share your desire to not let her run free any longer than we can help."

Speaking as the one Tomoe wanted to murder, I had to agree.


	10. Chapter 10

Miya Clochette may have been skilled in stalking and tracking prey, but unlike Tomoe she appeared to be unfamiliar with basic steps to protect herself from being tracked. Mind you, we had advantages, significantly the fact that we had several people who could trade off. "Shadowing" a person was not merely a matter of following them from place to place, but to be done successfully required awareness of multiple possibilities, reacting to possible sudden movements, and most of all avoiding being detected. I flattered myself that, at least in a city environment, I was _very_ good at it; Shizuru was on par with me, the constables nearly as good—Shizuru had asked Armitage to bring ones skilled in the art—and surprisingly, so was Chrysant. Armitage was actually the worst of us and even she understood the basics well enough to function as part of the team.

Keeping an eye on the girl, then, proved to be an easy task. In the event she took a cab, Armitage had left her carriage at a vantage point to the nearest cab-stand for our easy use, but that proved to be unnecessary as Clochette stayed on foot. With the assistance of the police officers we followed her for seven blocks on a zigzag path to a by-street of crumbling shops and tenements opposite an abandoned factory-yard. The fact was that she was so careless of her security that Shizuru and I could easily have followed her ourselves, without needing the police in tow.

We'd had discussions on this point in the past. On the Vamberry murder case, for example, the first time she had brought me on one of her investigations, she'd turned her conclusions over to Kanzaki and let him dig up the evidence and arrest the criminal. More than once when I'd adapted her cases to stories, I'd had to change the end to introduce a satisfying confrontation with the criminal.

This time, though, my objection was for reasons much more important than aesthetic ones. I'd not so much responded as erupted when she'd explained her plans upon leaving Talmadge's:

_"Are you out of your mind?"_

_"I do not believe so."_

_"You want to call in Armitage on this?"_

_"The Adair murder is her case, Natsuki, and we need official assistance to clear your reputation as well as to close the case."_

_I just stared at her._

_"You want to have Tomoe and Clochette _arrested_? Taken into custody by the police and formally charged?"_

_"They are guilty of murder, one for firing the shot and one as an accomplice and co-conspirator."_

_I couldn't believe that I was hearing this._

_"Shizuru, if Armitage arrests them, she'll interrogate them. She'll want to know _why_ Tomoe would help Adair."_

_"And?" she said placidly._

_I glanced around to make sure we truly were alone on the street, then lowered my voice._

_"Shizuru, she'll tell them. Maybe out of a desire to lash back at you after you so obviously rejected her, or maybe because her insanity gets the better of her. The reason doesn't matter, only the fact that she can and will tell Armitage about how you killed the Elders of the Obsidian Court and the Obsidian Prince, not to mention a handful of assorted thugs."_

_Shizuru nodded._

_"I have considered that."_

_"And you're still going through with it?" I yelped._

_She laid her hand lightly on my shoulder._

_"Natsuki, please relax. I do not intend anything so absurd as you seem to think."_

_I stared at her._

_"Then tell me how it's not absurd. Tell me how it isn't putting your neck in a noose."_

_"Assume for a moment that you are correct and she does do that. What do you think would happen? That I would be arrested on the bare word of a killer and a madwoman? That the police would reopen the investigation into a suicide, and accident, and two murders for whom there was a suspect who attempted to shoot it out with the police rather than be arrested, without having any credible evidence to the contrary? Nor, I may add, would there be any evidence for them to find, especially as all physical evidence is long gone from the crime scenes."_

_She shook her head._

_"No, Natsuki, the plain fact is that if Tomoe were to tell her story, it would be dismissed as the rantings of a diseased mind."_

_"What about former members of the First District?" I said darkly._

_"They would be the least of my concerns. On the one hand, the last thing such people would want is to have themselves associated with a criminal secret society. On the other, a few well-placed whispers in the right ears from Reito Kanzaki—who, as you know, has as much cause to be wary of Tomoe as do we—would quickly give rise to the belief that she was saying those things because she herself was responsible for the Obsidian Prince's death."_

_I shook my head._

_"I don't like it, Shizuru. Those kind of accusations have a way of being believed. Look at the tabloid press; the entire reason it exists is that people like to read about the wealthy and powerful having feet of clay. Even if no one actually acts on it, the rumor could get around. Scotland Yard detectives who like and respect you would look at you and whisper, 'Could it be true?' Clients could learn about it and decide not to trust you with their problems—or decide _to_ trust you with the _wrong _kind of problems. She's not worth ruining yourself over," I pleaded._

_"Then what course do you suggest?"_

_"I—" I stopped suddenly. She had me there._

_"I presume that you do not believe it would be possible to simply talk her out of desiring me?"_

_I shook my head._

_"Of course not. Someone like that, you could never trust her word even if we seemed to reach an understanding. She's crazy with—I won't dignify it by calling it love—desire? Lust? Schoolgirl infatuation run mad? Even if we did something like obtain damning evidence against her and got her to leave the country in exchange for us not using it, her insanity might drive her to break that agreement."_

_"I agree. Nor would I accept the idea of such a threat to you being allowed to run free. Her diseased brain might, for example, consider that license to send Miss Clochette or other third parties after you. But if she must not be allowed to stay free, and you do not wish to bring her to justice, then what is left?"_

_"Obviously, she has to be—" No one could ever accuse me of not being plain-spoken, but I still choked on the word "killed," my tongue unable to form the word. Maybe it was the memory of what Shizuru had done to the Obsidian Court, the last time we'd faced such a problem, that held me back._

_It certainly was for her, as she promptly explained._

_"Exactly, Natsuki. That _is_ the only other solution to the problem of Tomoe, and it is one that I will not take."_

_I looked up into her eyes._

_"I can't, Natsuki. I know now what I'm capable of, and it horrifies me. I will not...not, that is not correct, I _cannot_ allow myself to become that person again. I accept that the world is an imperfect place, that there may be times where circumstances require deadly force. But I shall not accept it where there is an alternative, even if that is not ideal. I will not pursue Tomoe intending her death."_

_The gaslight from the nearby street-lamp washed across her face, illuminating the naked pain in her expression, and it called me back to something I'd thought this morning, before Armitage had arrived to turn my world on its head: "feelings so overwhelming and intense that they could make the best and wisest woman I'd ever known throw away her ideals."_

_That was the difference between Shizuru and I. The coldness of a life spent preparing for revenge left me more accepting of pragmatic solutions, whereas she'd been driven to her limit before being able to go there, had to succumb at least a little to madness._

_Or maybe it was just that I'd stepped into the same place that she had occupied? That my seeming willingness to condone stopping Tomoe by killing her was not out of cold, harsh rationality, but from fear of what she would do if she ever got her hands on Shizuru? That my opposition to bringing in the police wasn't rational, but strictly out of fear for Shizuru's sake?_

_She knew about those risks, too. More than that, she knew about them and considered them less important than making sure she never went back to that place again. Shizuru was much more frightened of herself than she was of Tomoe or the police._

_I had to accept that judgment._

_"All right, Shizuru. We'll bring Armitage in on this."_

Thus it was six of us, not two, that approached the tenement which Clochette had entered. It was a four-story building with a flat roof, something that would have looked more in place in New York City than in London; it was filthy and more than one window had been boarded up. A card tacked to the front door read, "Rooms to Let."

"Percy, Lucas, go around back and keep an eye out to see if someone tries to slip out that way," Armitage said.

"Yes, ma'am," one of the plainclothesmen replied, and both headed up the alley between the tenement and the leatherworker's next door.

"All right, then; let's go. The longer we wait, the more likely Marguerite will take a glance out her window after Clochette tells her what happened."

Shizuru did not object to Armitage's snapping out orders, so I swallowed my irritation at how she was highhandedly taking over our case and fell into step behind her. We crossed the street, went up the steps, and right into the lobby. It was lucky, I thought, that this _was_ a doss-house, because if it had been a private building we couldn't just barge in without a warrant—or at least the police couldn't.

There was nothing like a reception desk; the entire milieu seemed like a cheaper, dirtier version of Mrs. Turner's in Soho. The acrid stench of alcohol, vomit, and urine made us wrinkle our noses in disgust; I wouldn't call myself a fastidious person but I couldn't understand how people could live like this. A rat scuttled out of the way in one corner, but there was no sign of Clochette.

I wondered if somewhere in Tomoe's diseased fantasies she expected that "Shizuru-_oneesama_" was going to swoop in and take her away from all this, like a princess being rescued.

Hung from one wall was a list of the rooms and their mostly foreign residents, probably for the benefit of the postman. Apparently there were four flats on each floor; a number of the names had been filled in with the same handwriting, probably the manager writing on behalf of illiterate tenants. "Tomoe Marguerite" was, not surprisingly, not listed, but Shizuru pointed to the name of the inhabitant of 304.

"Thomasine Margery? Hey, isn't that one of the names you said she used in Europe?"

"Like most people who shift their identities, Tomoe appears to cling to a few favorites."

"The handwriting's not the same as on the letters," I said. "It looks like she did get Clochette to write them for her." I shook my head in amazement. "Loyalty's one thing, but I can't imagine anyone being so toweringly _stupid_ as to basically frame _themselves_ for murder."

"Not just frame," Armitage pointed out, "if you're right that Clochette actually shot Adair." She shook her head. "Loyalty's a good thing, but not when it makes you throw away basic decency. I mean, if I ever turned into a mad killer, I'd expect Yukino to hand me over to the Yard right away, and I'd be damned disappointed in her if she tried to covet me up."

"It's 'cover,' Lady Haruka," Chrysant said, blushing. Shizuru and I studiously did not look at each other.

"_Ara, _indeed, I would not necessarily consider Miss Chrysant to be covetous."

Armitage blinked, clearly having no idea what Shizuru meant. Her companion, though, understood perfectly and grew even more embarrassed.

"Look, we know where Tomoe is," I snapped, feeling a little sympathetic for Chrysant as well as impatient to get this over with. "Let's just go up and get her." I yanked out my right-hand revolver by way of illustration and headed towards the steps.

We started up the narrow, rickety staircase, this time with me in the lead since I hadn't waited for anyone to answer before heading for the stairs. I kept my eyes on the steps, where empty gin bottles and sticky pools of liquid made the footing both treacherous and disgusting. I felt very glad for my trousers, and a wave of sympathy for Armitage and Chrysant in their skirts and to a lesser extent Shizuru in her kimono. I was about three steps past the first landing, Armitage just behind me, when I heard the sharp crack of a revolver.

Chrysant screamed and crumpled, clutching at her right leg, and we all spun towards the short hall off the landing. Miya Clochette was there near the end of the hall, clutching a revolver in both hands. I snapped off a shot with my own gun, not bothering to really aim but trying to keep her from being able to fire any more at us like we were shooting-gallery targets parading past. The bullet struck the wall next to her, spraying plaster, and she yelped in fear, nearly as loudly as Chrysant had.

"Yukino!" Armitage shouted almost in the same breath. "Are you all right?"

"Y-yes," Chrysant whimpered. Clochette had turned and started running down the hall to the window at the far end, which led to a fire-escape overlooking the alley. Her nerve had clearly broken when I'd returned fire, emphasizing again that it took a different kind of willpower entirely to be a _gunfighter_ as opposed to a _sniper_. "S-stop her, Lady Haruka!"

Armitage needed no further encouragement. Roaring, enraged, like a lion, she hurled herself after the fleeing girl. The door to one flat opened and a bleary, sleep-raddled face looked out to see what the fuss was about; the other doors remained shut. Either their occupants were cowering away from gunfire in the halls instead of looking out and attracting it, or else they were simply insensible from exhaustion or drink.

I didn't take a second shot at Clochette; Armitage was partially blocking the line of fire and besides, shooting her in the back while she was running away instead of firing wasn't an option. It didn't actually strike me that the police being there made it even less of an option although it should have; had I killed her with the first wild shot there'd be no legal consequences, but now it would simply be plain murder. In the heat of the moment, though, I wasn't thinking of legalities.

Clochette reached the window and tried to raise the sash, only to realize that it was secured. She fumbled with the catch and finally turned it, but by then Armitage was upon her. She tried to turn and bring up the gun, but the Inspector seized her arm and hammered it against the wall, making her drop the weapon, even as Armitage drove her clenched fist into the pit of Clochette's stomach. The breath went out of the girl with a whoosh.

With that situation apparently under control and Shizuru crouching by the fallen Chrysant to see what she could do for her, my thoughts immediately turned to Tomoe. There was no way the assassin had missed hearing the shots; the doors and walls of the doss-house were paper-thin. There was no time to lose; she might already be fleeing the building either by the fire escape on her own floor or some more complicated plan involving the roof. If it was the former she'd end up in the alley where the constables were waiting on guard, but I was afraid that scenario would more likely end up with two dead policemen than a captured Tomoe. Having fought her before, I knew what she was capable of and that was a lot more than the average Scotland Yard constable.

I rushed up the stairs, feet hammering on the risers as I no longer bothered to pick my way between steps but just tried to get up them as fast as possible. As soon as my head came above the level of the hall I turned and looked, determined not to be ambushed like we had been on the lower floor, but the only person I saw was a thin-faced man in ragged clothes with gray-stubbled cheeks. His bloodshot eyes widened at the sight of the revolver in my hand and he all but flung himself back into 301 in terror, slamming the door behind him. Was it purely the gun that had scared him or did he have some past experience in his home country that had driven the fear? I had no time for that; his story wasn't going to cross mine in any meaningful way. I charged down the hall and stopped outside 304.

"Tomoe!" I shouted. "Give up now! The police are here; you're finished this time!"

I grabbed the doorknob with my free hand and twisted. Not surprisingly, the door was locked. There wasn't time to bother with skeleton keys or lockpicks; I stepped back, raised my leg, and kicked in the flimsy door, wood wrenching apart around the lock with a cracking, popping sound. The door crashed into the inside wall and I swept the scene before me with the gun, ready to fire at the slightest hint of a threat.

"Natsuki!"

The shout was Shizuru's, and the stark fear in it had me spinning towards her at once without pausing to think. The reaction saved my life, I later realized, as a moment later, before I could even figure out what had put that desperate expression on her face, a spike of agony drove into my right shoulder. I cried out, not just from the pain but from the suddenness of it, and the pistol fell from my nerveless fingers to bounce off the floor. I fought for comprehension, but the next instant pain shot through the ribs on my right side and I went tumbling over to crash onto my back just inside Tomoe's door.

She glared at me from the hall, a cruel leer of triumph on her face even as she drew a knife from a sheath on her hip to replace the one she'd left embedded in my shoulder.

The door was open behind her, and I realized now what had happened. She'd been waiting in the room opposite, the door slightly open, and when I'd recklessly stormed up to her door she'd slipped out silently behind me. Shizuru's warning had saved my life; when I'd turned I'd fouled up Tomoe's attack. She'd probably been trying to cut my throat, which explained why her knife had been high enough for her to take me in the shoulder. A knee strike or kick to the ribs had been her follow-up to take me down.

That was how I'd gotten here. Doing something about it was a different question altogether. My right arm wasn't doing what I wanted and the pain was excruciating.

"You took the bait again, followed me right into my trap. I knew you'd distrust silly little Miya and follow her instead. Now, I'll make sure you'll never come between me and Shizuru-_oneesama_ again!"

_A little closer_, I thought, ready to kick out when she approached me to stab. Even in this prone position, I knew that I could deliver a devastating kick to her knee or ankle, probably taking her down. There was no way I was going to let her just run up and stab me.

Tomoe realized that, too, though. She wasn't going to come into range; she turned the knife in her fingers to reverse the grip for throwing. Her arm swung up—and Shizuru's knuckles drove into her armpit under the raised arm.

_Baritsu_, the obscure martial art practiced by Shizuru, was mostly a style that involved holds, locks, and throws like judo. This time, though, she was attacking purely with direct strikes. Shizuru drove the heel of her right hand into Tomoe's upper chest, drawing a sharp cry as it hit home where she'd been shot six months ago. In the next instant her left forearm came up hard under Tomoe's chin, making the assassin's teeth clack together. Tomoe went over backwards and crashed, sprawled, half-in and half-out of the door, lying very still.

"Natsuki! Natsuki, are you all right?" Shizuru wailed, dropping to her knees next to me. Her eyes were wide in terror, and she pushed my hand away from where it was clutching at my shoulder. With swift motions she took a knife from her kimono sleeve and cut away my shirt and jacket from around the wound, then dropped it and began to examine the injury. "Thank God, it looks like it missed any arteries. We'll have to have a doctor see to it. I'm sorry; it's better to leave the knife in the wound for now; it's helping to slow the bleeding and Tomoe likes serrated blades so the barbs could do more damage coming out."

"It's a lot better than it would have been if you hadn't shouted," I said, forcing myself to smile. She didn't need to hear me complain about how much pain I was in when it was only because of her that I was able to even feel pain. Twice over, in fact: first by shouting a warning and then by taking down Tomoe before she could finish me. "Thanks, Shizuru. You're starting to turn saving me into a habit."

She smiled and shook her head.

"No, this is the first time. Before now...that wasn't saving you from anything."

_One of these days,_ I resolved, _I have to sit her down and make her understand._ When I'd implied she'd saved me before, I hadn't meant from the Obsidian Court. I'd meant from myself, from letting my soul be buried under the icy shell of my obsession with vengeance.

It had been losing my mother's love that had set me onto that path, and it had been gaining Shizuru's that had brought me safely off it. Symmetry, that. _The pain must be making me delirious_, I decided after all those flowery thoughts.

"That's not what I meant, but it's okay." I reached up with my left hand towards her face. "Let's just get those women into custody so Chrysant and I can get to a doctor. It's been a bad day for side—"

Just as my fingers were about to touch her face, Shizuru's head jerked back, a gasp escaping her lips. At first I had been focused so much on her face that I thought she was pulling away from me, but then I realized that that wasn't the case. Shizuru was being _dragged_ away!

It took only a second longer for me to realize what was going on. Tomoe had clearly been knocked_ down_ but not _out_, and Shizuru hadn't made sure of her because she was so worried about me. Now, Tomoe had Shizuru's left arm wrenched up behind her back in a hammerlock while her other hand held a knife—the dropped one? a third? I didn't know—against Shizuru's throat. It was all the same as in Mrs. Turner's kitchen, except that instead of being asleep, Shizuru was awake, fully aware of what the assassin was putting her through.

"How can you _do_ this?" Tomoe squealed, actually stamping her foot like a child. "I've done so much for you, Shizuru-_oneesama_! I've killed for you! I was going to rid you of this bitch who drags you down to her weak, pathetic level! But you...you _hit_ me, and you ran to _her_! Cooing, wailing over her! How could you?"

"Put the knife down, Miss Marguerite," Armitage's voice barked out from the direction of the stairs. "This isn't helping you. You can't get away! Your accomplice is under arrest and the fire escape is blocked. Surrender now before things get any worse."

Tomoe scowled.

"Stupid Miya! She was supposed to keep this party for us alone!"

That exclamation, even more than her crow of victory earlier, told me that we really _had_ been set up, led to the building for Tomoe to finish her work. I felt a sick twisting in my gut at the knowledge, doubly so because it was the _same damned trick_ she had played six months ago when the arsonists who'd tried to burn down 221 Baker Street had been given false information as to where to find their superior. I'd forced that information out of them and had walked into an ambush. This time, similarly, we'd believed we'd "earned" the location of this doss-house by not believing Clochette's original lie and following her. By making us have to work for the location, they'd made us believe in it in a way we wouldn't if it were freely given.

I felt sick and disgusted at just how _stupid_ I'd been. Shizuru had only heard about it and Armitage hadn't been involved at all last time, but I'd actually walked into that trap before and that still hadn't been enough to teach me caution.

It did not console me that Tomoe hadn't thought it up on her own but learned it from Kanzaki.

"She has you, doesn't she, _oneesama_?" Tomoe wailed, her momentary anger suddenly replaced by a look of despair. I was sure that she wasn't acting; her insane mind simply kept careening from extreme to extreme without control. "The witch has put a spell on your heart, corrupted you with her weakness. You'll never be free of her, will you?"

Tomoe's hand trembled, and in a sudden flash of terror, I knew, I _knew_ with all my being what she was working her way towards:

_If I can't have you, no one will._

The ultimate expression of selfish love, when the obsession grew so strong that it devoured all thoughts of the object's welfare and left only the craving. Would Shizuru have wound up at that place eventually, had the sequence of events been different? Maybe that was why she was so condemning of herself, because she felt the _potential_ of what she could have become in addition to the reality.

Now, though, the look of fear in her eyes had nothing to do with the past. It was the future that mattered, the one Tomoe was trying to steal from us.

"You should be mine, not hers," the assassin wailed. "Why can't you see what's so obvious? I'm the only one who truly is a match for you!"

I couldn't lose her like this.

"If you can't see that, then—"

I didn't think about the risk, the possible consequences. My left hand dove for the butt of the second of my paired revolvers, drawing and firing in one motion like an American gunslinger. I didn't think about the size of my target, the shorter woman's face partially obscured behind Shizuru's shoulder, or the way the pain and bleeding from my other arm were making me shaky. None of it mattered, or even crossed my mind as I fired.

Only Shizuru.

The bullet punched through dead-center of Tomoe's forehead.

The knife dropped, rattling harmlessly off the floor.

Tomoe sagged, crumpling in a heap.

"Keep your _bloody_ hands off my Shizuru."


	11. Finale

**Cutting from the _Daily Telegraph_**

**kept by Natsuki Kuga**

The Park Lane Mystery Solved!

Consulting Detective Returns to Solve Adair Murder!

October XX, 1899: The murder of the Honorable Ronald Adair in his study in Park Lane, which so alarmed the people of London, was solved last night with the arrest of Miya Clochette, 17, of Mile End. Details are sketchy at this juncture, but it is believed that Miss Clochette was contracted to commit this murder for hire by a woman named Tomoe Marguerite.

Police were alerted to the possibility of the murderess's guilt by the well-known "consulting detective," Shizuru Viola, who returned to London after a six-month absence to provide Scotland Yard with key information in this matter. Miss Viola declined to be interviewed for this article, but the _Telegraph_ has learned that it was she who identified both murderess and client for the police.

As befits hardened criminals who would commit such a shocking murder, the depraved young women did not meekly submit to arrest but resisted with violence. One Scotland Yard officer was wounded by gunfire from Miss Clochette and Miss Viola's associate Miss Natsuki Kuga was stabbed, forcing the latter to shoot Miss Marguerite in self-defense. Displaying particularly notable courage and determination was Inspector Lady Haruka Armitage, who captured Miss Clochette despite not carrying a weapon herself. Perhaps shamed by this example of stalwart English womanhood, it is reported that Miss Clochette has made a full confession of her crimes, thus bringing to a close within twenty-four hours what had seemed to be an impenetrable mystery...

~X X X~

"But the dog did nothing in the night-time. Period. End quote. New line. Quote. That was the curious incident. Period. End—"

"Wait, what? The dog did nothing and that was _meaningful_?"

"Yes, it was."

"It just laid there asleep or something? Because it was drugged?"

"No, the dog wasn't drugged. It just didn't do anything."

"So how is _that_ supposed to be a clue?"

"You should let Natsuki finish the story and you will find out."

"Gaah!"

Juliet St. Vlas nearly leapt out of her chair in surprise; she'd been so intent on the discussion that she hadn't heard Shizuru open the door or walk up behind her.

"I'm sorry, Miss Zhang; I didn't realize that you didn't hear me," Shizuru teased.

"Yeah, I'll bet," Nao groused. Juliet insisted on calling herself "Nao Zhang," even though she had no Chinese in her at all. Irish was more likely, given the light skin, green eyes, and bright red hair which she kept clipped short and close to her skull for the ease of donning different wigs.

"Is this the Wessex Cup case you are discussing?" Shizuru carried on breezily. "It must be, if you were talking about the dog in the night-time."

"We're not discussing it; I'm writing it up as a story. Or at least as close as I can with this thing." I pointed to the shoulder sling that kept my right arm in place. I'd been lucky that Tomoe's knife had struck from the side, missing any of the major blood vessels in the shoulder, and really lucky that she hadn't used a gun, which might have shattered bone and crippled my arm even if I lived. "I don't see what the big deal is. I've got enough scars as it is; one more isn't going to hurt anything, so I'd rather have a few extra days' use of my arm."

The only reason the doctor had it immobilized was to keep me from tearing out my stitches, which basically meant the difference between "big ugly scar" and "almost ladylike little white line." It wasn't as if it was going to affect the mobility of the arm either way. Though I suppose having it heal cleanly was worth something, not to mention that it would be over and done with faster.

"So Miss Zhang is acting as your secretary, then?"

"Yeah, I need the practice at taking shorthand and typing in a real situation," Nao said.

"You are learning a new profession, then?"

"I'm becoming a productive member of the community," Nao said sarcastically.

"Spy _is_ a step up from blackmailer," I noted.

Shizuru frowned.

"Ah, then your training in secretarial skills is in order that you can successfully fill such a position and thereby gain access to files, private communications, and so on?"

"Very good. You should be a detective!"

"Feeling catty, Nao?"

"Thinking about typing up that scene about the horse race. Seriously, Kuga, don't you have _any_ idea how these things work? The Colonel would have been warned off the track a half-dozen times for some of the things you claim went on."

I shrugged—not a good plan with a shoulder wound—and said, "Dramatic license. This is about telling an exciting story, not giving a point-by-point report of the case."

Nao rolled her eyes.

"If you say so."

"I am sure that it will be very entertaining and extremely inaccurate, just like all of Natsuki's stories."

"Whose side are you on?"

"Why, yours, of course. I am always supportive of my beloved Natsuki's literary efforts." She walked over and pressed a quick kiss to my lips before I could react.

"Shizuru," I muttered, embarrassed, and waved my hand weakly towards Nao.

"Oh, please, Kuga," Nao said dryly. "I grew up in a high-class brothel, remember? I remember one night when we had a party with four M.P.s, two cabinet ministers, a foreign ambassador, a bevy of dancing girls, hot wax, leather restraints, some rather inventive clockwork devices and one extremely surprised goat. A pair of lesbians doesn't even get my attention."

"Exactly," Shizuru said happily. "And I enjoy showing how I feel about my Natsuki when I can, especially as I cannot do so before others most of the time."

_My Natsuki_, I thought. The phrase made me feel a little warmer inside whenever she used it. Even though it had been ten days since her return, part of me still couldn't quite believe that Shizuru was really there, alive and back in _my_ life, or that I'd not only regained everything I'd thought I'd lost, but so much more besides.

Of course, it would probably take about six years for me to get comfortable saying something like that to Mai or Mrs. Hudson. Nao was right out.

"Shizuru..."

"On the other hand, if you're going to be all billing and cooing, I think now is my time to leave before I'm forced to throw cold water on you or something. Same time tomorrow, Kuga?"

"I thought you intended to skip a day?"

"I was, but that damn dog is going to bother me until I get an answer." She stood and slipped her pencil and notepad into her reticule. "And it had better be a good one if you're going to keep me dangling like this."

"You could always figure it out yourself if you don't want to wait," I shot back. "As Shizuru said, it was quite elementary."

I should have known Shizuru wouldn't let that pass.

"Now, I seem to recall that Natsuki's exact words were, 'And just what the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?'"

"I wasn't at my best, running around the moor while still injured."

"Your brain is not in your shoulder," Nao pointed out, "though I can see why you'd have trouble finding it."

"Not that you have personal experience with using one to know," I shot back.

"Ah, the lovestruck puppy can bite!"

Shizuru broke up into a fit of laughter.

"You two are so cute!"

Nao and I shared a look of complete sympathy.

"Take care of her, Kuga; I think she's losing it."

"It's probably that she's gone an hour without tea. Can you show yourself out?"

"Of course. And you're probably right; I'll ask Mrs. Hudson to send some up."

The door clicked shut behind her.

"Miss Zhang is an interesting person," Shizuru said. "She is, I think, very much like Natsuki had the world been harsher to you."

Nao and Shizuru had an odd relationship. It was because of Shizuru's investigation that Nao's mother had been hanged for multiple counts of murder. On the other hand, that same investigation had revealed that Nao's mother _was_ Nao's mother and that rather than having cast Nao off at birth she had always been looking after her and trying to protect her as best she could. It was that knowledge which was allowing the red-haired girl to get over some of the bitterness that had taken root in Nao's soul and let her edges soften a bit.

"I think that's enough about Nao for one day," I said, answering both Shizuru's statement and my own thoughts. "How did things go with Armitage?"

"Quite well. She believes that Miss Clochette will avoid hanging for killing Ronald Adair, given her age, the fact that she freely confessed, and the evidence of Mr. Adair's letters that it was a plan of suicide."

"I'm glad. She's guilty of the act, but she was really just a pawn of Tomoe's. I feel sorry for her more than anything else. I doubt she ever really understood what Tomoe was after."

Shizuru nodded.

"I find it hard to take a charitable view of her, given that she freely participated in a scheme to attack your reputation and ultimately your life, but it is clear that she was a young woman of weak character who had submitted to a stronger will, rather than a truly evil or malicious person."

"How is Chrysant doing?" I ask. She'd been even luckier than I had; the bullet had passed cleanly through the fleshy part of her outer thigh without hitting bone, making her major concern keeping the wound clean and free from infection while it healed.

"According to the Inspector, she is doing well, although surprisingly she is proving to be a very bad patient."

"Really? That surprises me, too."

"It turns out, it seems, that she is the sort of woman who cannot bear forced inactivity. She wishes to be out of her bed, assisting the Inspector in her duties at Scotland Yard, at the very least in the office. It is shaping up to be quite the battle of wills between Miss Chrysant's desire to serve and Inspector Armitage's desire to make sure Miss Chrysant is fully healed before resuming her duties."

I chortled.

"That ought to be a fun argument. Armitage yelling, blustering, and issuing decrees while Chrysant quietly but stubbornly pleads. Personally, my money is on Armitage."

Shizuru smiled at me.

"Oh, I don't know. It would not do to underestimate the will of a detective's companion. You would not now be mangling the events of the Wessex Cup had you remained quietly at home."

"As if wild horses could keep me away from what looked like it would be the first decent story base I've had in weeks. Or trained domestic horses, since that's what we were after."

The news of Shizuru's return to practice and her involvement in the solution of the Adair murder had splashed her name all over the papers, and when a dramatic criminal case had come on its heels, it was not long before the involved parties had come to her door requesting aid. She'd tried to demur for my sake, but I could tell that she was aching to tackle the matter. Since there was nothing wrong with my legs, I'd insisted that my shoulder could heal as well in the country as in London. The end result had been perfect: Shizuru had savored the case to its conclusion, the client was happy, my shoulder was none the worse for wear, I had a new story, and our bank account (_Our!_ Now that was a change in and of itself for me to get used to.) had gained some much-needed relief from the grateful stable-owner's fee.

That was rather a nice turn of events, since the Adair case, while full of emotional rewards, had been quite lacking in material compensation. Under the circumstances, I hadn't even sent Armitage the bill I'd threatened her with, so I'd been taken aback when she paid it anyway at my standard rate for a day's work. The Countess of Maynooth had written a handsome letter of apology. The more sordid details had been kept out of the papers, but Armitage had been obliged to deliver the plain truth as she knew it to the family, and Adair's mother had been forced to accept the kind of man her younger son had been.

I'd accepted the apology, as I have something of a soft spot for parents who love and want to protect their children—admittedly, an easier stance to take after she'd admitted she was wrong and wasn't spitting insults in my face. Besides, the Countess had managed to lose two children at once, as the single paragraph in the society column about Lady Hilda Adair "convalescing in the country following the tragedy of her brother's slaying" was apparently shorthand for "she requires a keeper after her complete mental breakdown." I had some suspicions about the causes for that, none of which I liked to think about for too long.

Nonetheless, I was glad to leave it all behind me. I'd never been able to properly separate the past from the present before, but now things were different. Now all my past sorrows had been wrapped up, maybe not neatly and prettily in a Christmas-paper package, but at least so that I owed them no further obligation. I didn't know what would happen with Shizuru and I going forward, but as long as I'd gone and found myself in a fairy tale, the least I could do was to try for happily-ever-after.

"Natsuki, is something wrong?"

"What? No? Why?" I babbled, jolted out of my reverie.

"You were sitting there quietly for several minutes, staring off without really looking at anything, and you had the strangest little smile on your face."

I chuckled.

"It's nothing much, really."

Shizuru pouted.

"You won't tell me? _Ikezu_."

"Calling me a meanie isn't going to help, you know."

"I'm supposed to be absolutely honest with my lover, though, aren't I?"

I gave up and laughed.

"I just can't win against you, can I?"

She smiled back, then leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"For a lesson well learned."

I turned to face her.

"Though, Shizuru, there's still a lesson you seem to still be working on."

She blinked in surprise.

"What is that?"

I slipped my good arm around her waist and pulled her against me, capturing her lips with my own, kissing her warmly and firmly.

"_That_ is how you reward your sweetheart with a kiss."

Amazingly, it was _her_ cheeks that took on a faint blush.

"I...see. I shall have to pay close attention to this lesson in the future."

"It's elementary, my dear Shizuru."

~X X X~

_A/N: I'm sure most of you instantly recognized the story Natsuki is dictating to Nao as being "Silver Blaze." (If you _didn't_ recognize it, please note that it's in the public domain and available on the Internet—you're only a quick Google away from reading one of _the_ classic mystery stories.) Nao's comments about the inaccuracy of the horse-racing scenes, by the way, are quite true; Conan Doyle definitely Did Not Do The Research in this matter._

_Nao's "real" last name (St. Vlas) obviously comes from the name of Yukariko's CHILD (which is just "Vulas" in the official release...), but in this context—as would have been revealed in "You Know My Methods, Natsuki," it's the name of the church orphanage where she was left._

_Finally, I'd like to thank all of you, the readers, who have stayed with me through the course of this project. I've had a lot of fun working on this braided novel and its one-shots, and I hope that you yourselves have enjoyed it as well. I'd especially like to thank those of you who have been consistent reviewers, as I've never before written anything which so consistently received intelligent, analytical feedback, and in which so many people were able to identify and pick up on the subtler hints, allusions and foreshadowing that I was trying to give along the way. Thank you all so much; you're completely awesome! Several other reviewers have given me the greatest compliment I can imagine; as I've tried to say in the replies to such reviews, those of you who have read these stories and decided because of them to go try out the original Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle have flattered me beyond measure. Again, thank you all very much for reading, and I hope to see you again!_


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